Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

by David Grann

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 

"Disturbing and riveting...It will sear your soul." —Dave Eggers, New York Times Book Review

SHELF AWARENESS'S BEST BOOK OF 2017

Named a best book of the year by Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR's Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "On Point," Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub's "Ultimate Best Books," Library Journal, Paste, Kirkus, Slate.com and Book Browse

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history
       
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
      Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.
      In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection.  Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. 
      In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

• ISBN10: 0385534248
• ISBN13: 9780385534246
• Publish Date: 18 April 2017 (first published 11 February 2017)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
• Imprint: Doubleday
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385534246

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

This is horrific, the exploitation, the murders for profit and the terrible, horrible, attitude to Native Americans...
 
I was both speechless and wanting to talk to everyone about it. 
 
In the late 19th and early 20th Century the Osage Indians had oil under the reservation and that meant money, lots of money. Overlay that with an attitude that said that the Osage (and most Native Americans) were little more than children, don't regulate the situation and you create a situation where greed will cause problems.  This situation lead to the death of several people and the main story in this followed one family. One family whose deaths broke the silence about the situation and ended with just one person left alive, her husband and a relative of his in jail for murder and a community shattered.  Along with the beginning of the FBI as it is now this is an interesting argument for oversight by third parties of vulnerable people, of how power can corrupt and about how equality has to be for everyone.

[Beth C.]

Reign of Terror. That's what the Osage call it. When their people were being systematically used, abused, and murdered for the oil money they owned. A conspiracy that encompassed most of the town in one form or another, and one that still resonates with the descendants of those involved.

Every so often, I really enjoy a good nonfiction book. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to find that they are really a struggle to read - dry, and (I hate to say it) even boring. However, that was definitely not the case here. I read the book almost in one sitting, and was alternately horrified by the cruelty done to the Osage, and engrossed by the efforts to find out who did it and to bring them to justice. Grann has a knack of bringing the past to life here, and I believe he has done justice to the events of so long ago.

I often hesitate to read those books that are "must-reads" because I tend to find that I'm not as engrossed in them as promised. Thankfully, that was not the case here, and it truly is a must-read. Eye-opening, fascinating, and a testament to those men who helped to bring justice to the Osage. It is also a book that honors those killed during The Reign of Terror, letting their forgotten story be one that lives on beyond those memories of their people.

[dpfaef]

review to follow