By David Grann
This was another book club selection. If I wasn’t assured that this was about actual events, it would have been over the top for fiction. The crimes stacked on crimes to claim oil head rights from Osage people in the 1920s was wild. The criminals went after witnesses, jurors, investigators, and even acted as or hired their own bogus investigators to obscure the evidence. It reminded me of a comic book villain, Kingpin, or the like. It felt like the evil deeds were known, but unprovable in such a corrupt environment. Not that I think we’re entirely above corruption now or that justice is consistently served, but it was another reminder that “the good ol’ days” never existed. The story is dominated by racism and violent criminality. Neither of which seemed to carry much consequences. Criminals and killers were allowed to be free. Racism was built into the law itself with the Osage requiring white guardians of their own money. The story seemed to wrap up with the mastermind of multiple killings being sentenced to life in prison. The book continues, however, to reveal that it was really just one small slice of a pattern of evil that extended well beyond the most publicized cases. I still don’t want to live in an earlier time, and I still don’t want to live in a small town in Oklahoma.