Killers of the Flower Moon ★★★☆☆

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Click Here To Buy)

★★★☆☆

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann is a non-fiction book about oil and murder.

I read this as an audiobook on loan from the library. The book is read by three narrators each reading a different chronicle and separating the book into three parts.

Part One is about the murders as they happened and the Osage people who were involved. The tribe had already been sequestered to unwanted land. After oil was found on that land, the Osage people became some of the richest people in the world…and then they started to be killed. People were found at the bottoms of ravines with bullets in their heads or slumped over in their cars in the middle of nowhere. Even worse, some were poisoned, sick for years before they died and the true cause was known and still others had their houses blown up while they slept in them. There wasn’t a lot of “law” as we know about it at the time, and after a few years, the Osage pressured the government to get involved to help solve these crimes.

Part Two is about the FBI’s involvement in the case and the trial - a new division simply called Bureau of Investigations and led by J. Edgar Hoover - agents assigned to the case infiltrated the area to discover the killer, who ended up being someone close in the family. The trial was a national sensation due to the racism experienced by Native Americans at the time. It was a big deal that the guilty party served prison time.

Finally, Part Three is when the author returned to the scene of the crimes and spoke with present-day Osage descendants of those murdered. This section raised the question of how many Osage were murdered and not documented. Overall, the book highlights the injustice and racial violence experienced by the Osage Tribe in the 1920s and how they are still being affected today.

I found out while writing this review that they are making this book into a movie and Martin Scorsese is the director! Bound to be worth checking out.

If you liked Killers of the Flower Moon, I also recommend Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, Furious Hours by Casey Cep, and The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer.

Happy reading,

Ms.Bjork