Killers of the Flower Moon

The first three quarters of Killers of the Flower moon play out as a fascinating true-crime historical novel, as Grann pieces together the details of a long-buried series of brutal murders perpetrated by a psychotically evil white man against the residents of an Oklahoma Indian Reservation which in the early 20th century contained one of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States. One investigator tries to do the case right but is ultimately impeded by the structures of white supremacy on the ground in Oklahoma and the bureaucratic machinery of the newly born FBI who had commissioned him. The details of the murders, which were performed in order to consolidate oil head rights which could only otherwise be passed hereditarily are grisly and horrifying in their ruthlessness, but the book ends on a genuinely stomach churning final act wherein the scale and scope of such murders becomes apparent, if not yet (even in 2022) totally clear.