Lady Killers
by Tori Telfer | 
The Killing Season
by Miles Corwin |
Hell's Princess
by Harold Schechter | 
Killers of the Flower Moon
by David Grann | 
Lost Girls
by Robert Kolker | 
The Onion Field
by Joseph Wambaugh | 
Devil's Knot
by Mara Leveritt | 
Wicked Beyond Belief
by Michael Bilton |
Low Life
by Luc Sante | 
Highway of Tears
by Jessica McDiarmid | 
Midnight in Peking
by Paul French |
American Fire
by Monica Hesse | 
Norco '80
by Peter Houlahan | 
Fire in a Canebrake
by Laura Wexler | 
Till Death Us Do Part
by Vincent Bugliosi | 
Casino
by Nicholas Pileggi | 
Big Trouble
by J. Anthony Lukas |
Our Guys
by Bernard Lefkowitz | 
The Cases That Haunt Us
by John Douglas | 
Born to Kill
by T. J. English |
In 1935, the Spokane police regularly extorted sex, food, and money from the reluctant hobos (many of them displaced farmers who had fled the midwestern dust bowls), robbed dairies, and engaged in all manner of nefarious crimes, including murder. This history was suppressed until 1989, when former logger, Vietnam vet, and Spokane cop Tony Bamonte discovered a strange 1955 deathbed confession while researching a thesis on local law enforcement history. Bamonte began to probe what had every appearance of widespread police crime and a massive cover-up whose highlight was the unsolved murder of Town Marshall George Conff. The fact that many of those involved, now in their 80s and 90s, were still alive made it imperative that Bamonte unravel this mystery. The result is Breaking Blue, a white-knuckle ride through institutional corruption and cover-up that vividly documents Depression-era Spokane and an extraordinary case that few believed would ever be brought to light.