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

This was a fascinating choice of subject and an underexplored topic in American history, and you could clearly see the author's passion for the subject and the volume and depth of work he put in to the reporting.

Outside of Tom White, I felt the various people's characters could have been fleshed out better. I didn't feel like I knew a lot about Mollie's inner life after her section, so it lacked an Osage point of view character. I also would have liked to have known more about William Hale.

The third section is supposed to be the core revelation of the book and the bulk of the new facts the author uncovered, but the way it's written seemed quick and somehow perfunctory.

Overall, a lot of great ingredients were there, but they weren't put together in a compelling way. I look forward to seeing what the movie can do with the same elements.

This was an informative and disturbing history of events in the 1920s in the state of Oklahoma. For readers who are stressed out by recent political fighting in the 21st century, this story shows that the intersection of racism, power, and corruption is a longstanding theme in American affairs--both locally and nationally. I’m happy to have learned about this history, though sad to have discovered the inner workings of how the Osage were treated for so long. Overall, I’d recommend this book. However, I found the writing style distracting. I think it’s the attempt to pack the collection of many details and sequences of deep research into a narrative. The stylistic affect is that it’s aimed too low. With all the transitions of “One day, two men were out hunting,” “One day, Hale’s pastures were set on fire,” I often felt like I was reading a 6th grade SRA card. I also found that a lot of key information was appended after the main narrative, and might have been hinted at earlier for a better impact.