😱😱😱😱😱 My face while listening to this. I think I heard about these murders a while back, but I wasn't aware of the background. The greed and the institutional discrimination that put the Osage tribe members in this peril and halfway destroyed them is mind boggling. The writing was average I thought and the audio narration kind of a drag until I bumped up the speed.

The book is about a chapter of American history that not many people know about: the Osage murders. At the start of the book it describes how many Osage hired private detectives to solve the cases, but they only manage to solve them when the government interferes. At least that is what the author thinks until he visits the place about a century after the murders and sees for himself how many cases remained unsolved und what an large impact that has on the Osage.

Overall I would say it is a well written book with an extremely interesting plot. The only criticism I can mention really is, that at the start of the book it is hard to follow the story line because so many people are mentioned. I really liked all the visuals that are included and it’s easy to say that this is an awesome read, especially if you are in to history.

Informativ, spannend, deprimierend. David Grann bringt mit hervorragender journalistischer Arbeit die halb vergessene Reign of Terror der Osage wieder in das Bewusstsein der Menschen. Ich muss zu meiner Schande gestehen, dass ich zuvor noch nichts von den Osage gehört habe, weshalb ich es aber umso interessanter fand, etwas über ihre Kultur, die Mordserie in den 1920ern, sowie die damaligen Lebensumstände in ihrer Reservation (v. a. das Vormundschaftssystem) zu lernen. Der Teil des Buches, der die Mordfälle aus der Perspektive des FBI darstellt, liest sich spannend wie ein Krimi, hat aber aufgrund der realen Akteure und Opfer auch einen bedrückenden Beiklang.

This is the first ever true crime it Investigative journalism book I ever read and I had wasn't disappointed. I thought the book was going to be slow and dry but it wasn't. I couldn't just put it down. Also he book just shook me to the core. Never have ever gotten this angry reading a book. God the injustice the osages faced. I am happy that they are making a movie and giving this part of the American history the focus it deserves.

Ich hatte etwas anderes von diesem Buch erwartet. Ich ging davon aus, dass ich mehr Hintergründe über das FBI erfahren würde, über die beginnenden Strukturen, die Probleme, die Entstehung des riesigen Systems, was es heute ist. Ja, man erfährt auch etwas über die Anfänge dieser Einrichtung und die Schwierigkeiten, die sich ihr anfangs boten. Aber dennoch liegt der Schwerpunkt des Buchs auf sehr verwickelten und komplizierten Morden innerhalb eines nordamerikanischen Indianerstamms zwischen 1921 und 1926. Das Buch ist sehr gut recherchiert, keine Frage. Ich fand es jedoch zu verwirrend und konnte kein rechtes Interesse für das Thema aufbringen.

I'm not into true crime and all this blood goggling but this book I liked anyway. It's well researched and written, with the author not making himself the hero of the book like so many of his colleagues of non-fiction do. Every "character" gets a chance to share their story without it being too long-winded. So it's a good book, but god did it make me sick.