Killers of the Flower Moon
Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI
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4.2 • 70 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NON-FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
**SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIO AND ROBERT DE NIRO**
‘A riveting true story of greed, serial murder and racial injustice’ JON KRAKAUER
‘A fiercely entertaining mystery story and a wrenching exploration of evil’ KATE ATKINSON
‘A fascinating account of a tragic and forgotten chapter in the history of the American West’ JOHN GRISHAM
From the bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, now a major film starring Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller and Robert Pattison, and the Number One international bestseller The Wager, comes a true-life murder story which became one of the FBI’s first major homicide investigations.
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. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
‘David Grann has a razor-keen instinct for suspense’ LOUISE ERDRICH
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Author of the excellent The Lost City of Z, David Grann applies his assiduous research and gripping narrative style to a shocking series of murders that beset the Osage Native American people during the 1920s—after the discovery of oil on their land. In a true-life tale that draws on the early history of the FBI, Grann brings so much new detail to many of the lives involved that you can’t help but care deeply—and often be devastated by—their fates.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Lost City of Z) burnishes his reputation as a brilliant storyteller in this gripping true-crime narrative, which revisits a baffling and frightening and relatively unknown spree of murders occurring mostly in Oklahoma during the 1920s. From 1921 to 1926, at least two dozen people were murdered by a killer or killers apparently targeting members of the Osage Indian Nation, who at the time were considered "the wealthiest people per capita in the world" thanks to the discovery of oil beneath their lands. The violent campaign of terror is believed to have begun with the 1921 disappearance of two Osage Indians, Charles Whitehorn and Anna Brown, and the discovery of their corpses soon afterwards, followed by many other murders in the next five years. The outcry over the killings led to the involvement in 1925 of an "obscure" branch of the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation, which eventually charged some surprising figures with the murders. Grann demonstrates how the Osage Murders inquiry helped Hoover to make the case for a "national, more professional, scientifically skilled" police force. Grann's own dogged detective work reveals another layer to the case that Hoover's men had never exposed.
Customer Reviews
Gripping
Well researched and moving account of crimes that should never have occurred.
Great book. Poor format. Don’t waste your money.
Don’t buy this on iBooks. It’s missing lots of text and not set for this format. Lots of text is missing and photos are cut off.
Read Reads like a crime thriller but all the more horrifying because it’s all true
I stumbled on this book by accident and what a treasure I did find! This book will stay with me long after I’ve finished it and I will probably re-read it in the near future sometime and still be horrified by the factual events that took place within this book. David Grann should be up there with the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Capote, Harper Lee, John Grisham, James Patterson just to name a few. So why had I never heard of him before? One thing is for certain, I will never forget his name from now on. His writing is a superb mixture of factual reports from the era in which the crimes occurred and his own uniquely written POV extracts in the present. This mixture makes for one hell of a page turner. The genius of his writing and photographical evidence pulls you into the story and the era. When you come to the realisation that this is not a fictional crime novel and all these events actually happened, the writing becomes even more genius as it stirs an emotional response from the reader. You could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps David Grann is a psychologist or detective and not a reporter as he unmasks the veil of true human evil and corruption in this unforgivably sad but true account of the Osage Nation Peoples.