Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) About Birth of the FBI

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. Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of the brutal murders behind white settlers’ attempted dispossession of an Osage family’s Oklahoma lands, under which lay some of the world’s most valuable oil fields. That this conspiracy of theft, terror, and genocide helped launch J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI deepens the narrative’s moral complexity. Structured taut as a noir, researched like an indictment, and written with hard-boiled empathy, the book leaves us to wonder at the unresolved and unrecorded crimes against Native Americans. Plot: In the 1920s, members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma, are murdered after oil is found on their land, and the FBI decides to investigate.