The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.

It’s the end of the season for our annual Siblings’ Book Club, and this year I finished 9 of our 10 books (plus 2 runners-up, as you can see on our list). The only book I couldn’t find and read was The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz (1941), so it’ll stay on my must-read list till I can somehow access it.

David Grann’s History

Killers of the Flower Moon was the second David Grann book on our list this year after The Wager (2023), and I think we’ll be seeing him again. His ability to revive long-forgotten historical accounts for modern audiences makes him a favorite go-to author, likened to Erik Larson or the more popular David McCullough. History’s never boring when you’re reading great best historians like these guys or biographers like Edmund Morris!

This particular historical event is more than just “not well known” for me—I hate to admit that I’d never even heard of the Osage people before picking up this book! Having read it, I’m slightly more inclined now to watch the Leonardo DiCaprio film adaptation of it, though I’m pretty fed up with that whole Hollywood scene. It’s a total cesspool out there, and the more I see its underbelly, the more I hate to participate in it, even as a distant spectator. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Plot Summary

Killers traces a number of mysterious murders in Osage country, murders of wealthy Osage Indians living high off the kickbacks they got from the oil that discovered on their otherwise useless land. Local police, private eyes, and government investigators all try their hand at bringing the culprit (or culprits) to justice, and (I hope it’s no spoiler alert) they ultimately do—though “justice” may be too strong a word.

Reading Style

While there are plenty of personalities involved in the community, the murders, and the investigation that could have made this book feel more like a living drama than it is, Grann’s delivery felt—oh what’s the word—statistical? It reads more like a newspaper report than the epic drama we get in The Wager—a book that included a great deal more life, color, and atmosphere. That’s not to disparage Grann in any way: this earlier book isn’t worse than his later, just different.

In Killers, there’s a noticeable distance from the reader to the crimes. Whereas we were invited with Bacon in Wager to the top of the 100-foot mast in a storm, here we’re watching events play out on a screen. I don’t think this is simply because the events are long-since passed—after all, these murders might have been forgotten by history, but they’ve never been forgotten by the families and descendants effected. Instead, I think the distance is a kindness Grann shows those descendants—it was an era of great sadness several generations ago, yet it is still apparently raw to the Osage community.

This is no different than other tribes’ continued emotional reaction to many of the atrocities that the rest of America has chalked up to historical mistakes for which we’re sorry but from which we’re also ready to move on. When viewing it through this lens, I think Grann had a very tight line to walk, yet his approach expertly handled the tense situation.

The F.B.I.

I felt the whole “birth of the F.B.I.” thing was more a marketing hook than an actual element of the story. Sure, we see some early Hoover and witness at least part of the transition from rough and scheming private eyes to snappy and sober bureau agents—not to mention advancements in fingerprint technology—but the book isn’t really about the birth of the FBI, at least not to the extent of placing it in the subtitle. Other readers will probably disagree with me, as is their right.

I did like, however, the strong references to the detective agencies common at the turn of the century. Being a Clive Cussler fan, I’ve seen a lot this in his Isaac Bell books, so it’s nice to see how close to reality the feel of those adventures actually comes.

Conclusion

True crime is rarely my thing, but I’m glad I’ve met another author capable of bring past events like this to life. David Grann’s earlier book, The Lost City of Z, is high on my list of next reads—though I do think that if you can only read one of these two later books, The Wager was a more captivating read.

©2024 E.T.

Read More from David Grann:

• The Lost City of Z (2005)
• Killers of the Flower Moon (2017)
• The Wager (2023)