Well written true story of the The Reign of Terror, several years in the 1920's when numerous members of the Osage Nation were murdered for their mineral rights.SYNOPSISThis is a three part story. Part one follows the murders of many members of a prominent Osage family, part two, is the story of the early FBI agents who investigated the murders and the trial, part three is the author, David Grann's investigation of the story and the aftermath of these murders; the effect it still has on their families almost one hundred years later.WHAT I LOVEDBoth informative and interesting. Some historical nonfiction authors tend to make a fascinating story dull by adding in the most banal details, I often wonder if it's to fill pages or show off to their colleagues how well they researched their subject. Grann avoided that altogether and stuck to the facts which would interest a broader audience. He made history come alive.The story itself is both shameful and very interesting. It's amazing that one hundred years ago, outright murder and embezzlement would go mostly unpunished due to a person's race. The estimate was somewhere between 26 and 100 Osage murdered in one decade. Only a very few perpetrators were prosecuted.WHAT I DIDN'T LOVEThis book covered some ugly truths. The subject matter was hard to read at times but otherwise, there wasn't a lot to not like.OVERALLI think this is an important book to read to help us understand the past and it's effects on the present and future.

Author David Grann spent years doing research and uncovering new evidence in writing Killers of the Flower Moon. Since I was a fan of his from reading The Lost City of Z, I expected this latest book to be the sort of non-fiction I love: the kind that reads like the best fiction. I was not disappointed. What I did not expect was just how infuriated I would become by reading it.Having been a huge horse racing fan when I was a teenager, I knew about the wealth of the Osage Nation in the 1920s. One of the Osage owned a winner of the Kentucky Derby. But that knowledge was just cursory. I had no idea how rich the Osage really were, and I certainly didn't have a clue that the government didn't trust them with all that money. I should not have been so naive. It had to madden many whites that, although they'd shoved the Osage onto a piece of land they deemed unfit for themselves, oil would be discovered and the Osage would turn out to be the wealthiest people in the world. The one way they had of trying to horn in on this wealth was by declaring that the Osage were not fit to use their own money wisely. In many cases whites were put in charge of the families' money, and they gave their wards allowances (and themselves large fees for their business knowledge).Why on earth should I be so surprised that this greed would escalate to murder? It is the natural progression after all. To this day, the Osage have trust issues, and who can blame them? They tried to get dozens of murders investigated, but instead the killings were covered up. What Grann did in Killers of the Flower Moon was to dig deeper and deeper and expose just how huge the problem actually was. As I read, words like horrifying, unspeakable, and several others flashed through my mind. This is an uncomfortable read for anyone with a conscience; nevertheless, it is a fascinating and important one.(Review copy courtesy of NetGalley)

Frankly, the first 50%-75% of this historical account is nothing but an uninteresting maze of details, people, and facts. The book gets interesting and a page turner once the F.B.I. enters the picture and systematically solves the mystery of the murders. I think that the whole account of the Osage murders was poorly editied and should have started with the ending instead of filling the beginning of the account with meaningless and seemingly unrelated details and people which any reader would find difficult to keep track of until things really started falling into place. Granted, the way the book is written puts the reader in the position of the those experiencing the murders who did not have a clue of why they were happening. However, these real people knew the people being killed and their relationships with other people which the reader doesn't know at that time of his reading the book. Still, I think this story could have been more interestingly told by letting it begin with logic rather than chaos, because the chaos could have still been experienced as it related to a story moving toward a logical conclusion. Then, we could see how the events and people fit together from the beginning.

Deeply researched, well written account of a decade of murders of wealthy Osage Native Americans. A series of horrific crimes, conspiracies and cover-ups that is not well know - but should be! The author dove deep into official and unofficial documents to research his work. His findings went beyond accepted facts about the case (such as the number of killings and the length of time they occurred over). The book does not read like a recounting of facts, it reads more like a thriller - just as officials think they have the killer(s) there are twists and turns, leaving local and federal - the newly formed Hoover FBI- starting over from scratch. We meet the victims, the lawmen (my favorite was Tom White - a character who deserves his own movie!) and the perpetrators, then we also meet the descendants of the victims.The crimes were sinister and the cover-ups evil brilliance. The Osage, who had been forced to barren Oklahoma lands were the recipients of mining/mineral rights and then oil was discovered. They become the richest per capita people in the world at the time, and yet the Federal Government deemed it necessary to appoint guardians to each of them and deny them the right to manage their own funds. Their neighbors were extremely jealous of their wealth, their guardians largely scammed them, and these factors led to the evil plot to gain their wealth. To add insult to injury further "scamming" may be taking place now in the present time. Shameful.Note -About 2/3 thru the book it feels like the story is pretty much wrapped up, but keep reading because the story continues to the present day!

While the facts are of tragic interest the writer doesn't bring the characters to life--leaving them on the pages as old and remote as the grainy photographs in the book.