One of the most dangerous places in America to live in the early 1920s was Oklahoma’s oil-rich Osage Indian Reservation, where newly wealthy tribal members were systematically murdered by gunfire, poison, orchestrated auto accident, and bombing. At least two dozen people in the region died, at first with little consequence as local officials showed scant concern for the Native Americans’ plight.

The case accelerated, however, when the fledgling FBI and young director J. Edgar Hoover moved in.

David Grann’s account of one of the most chilling murder conspiracies in U.S. history, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, is among the most heralded books of the year (its film rights fetching an astonishing $5 million). The veteran New Yorker writer discusses the story in a presentation co-presented by Rainy Day Books.