Review: Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon (2017)

[truepenny]

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

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book tells a number of different stories. There's the story of the murders of Mollie Burkhardt's family, the story of the FBI investigation of those murders (and the story of that megalomaniac J. Edgar Hoover and the creation of the FBI), and then the story of the journalist who starts researching those two stories only to find himself uncovering a different story. And I think Grann never quite got those stories to jell together, never quite got the delicate interconnected houses of cards to stand up properly, just as I can't find the metaphor I want to describe the phenomenon. I did not enjoy this book as much as The Lost City of Z, although it is an excellent book, and I think the reason is that Grann isn't directing traffic quite as deftly.

I spent the book simultaneously cynically unsurprised at what white people would do for money and absolutely aghast that not only would white people do these things, but other white people would let them get away with it and help them cover it up. The breadth and depth of the conspiracies (yes, very distinctly plural) to murder the Osage for their mineral rights are corrosively chilling and an important part of the story of the European colonization of America.



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