Midnight Son – 4 stars
An upcoming native Alaskan actor, Teddy Kyle Smith, vanishes into the wilderness after his mother’s death and, attacking the first men who come across him, leaves them for dead. But when he is finally captured, he has a bizarre story to tell – that of encountering the Iñukuns, a mythic lost tribe.
An Audible original, this audiobook is executed in an interesting documentary format, incorporating interviews and clips from police interrogations and court testimony alongside narration. The case is not always an interesting one from a true crime perspective, but what kept me engaged throughout was learning about the Inupiaq people live in modern-day Alaska and the ways in which their ancient culture intersected and interacted with the state criminal justice system.
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Killers of the Flower Moon – 4 stars
In the 1920s, a spree of mysterious deaths began to plague the Osage Indians, whose oil wealth had made others resentful of them. But the conspiracy of the murders was darker and deeper than anyone could have suspected.
I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while, but finally took the plunge in light of the upcoming movie. This is a fascinating, depressing story about how a people were systematically subjected to great violence for their great wealth, and how the control that the US government exerted over them only made them more vulnerable to exploitation. I found myself shocked by the various twists and turns in the case – the last section of the book, “The Journalist,” especially boggled the mind.
However, my attention did lag at times during the second part of the book, and in a strange was felt emotionally distant from the various personages that populated the story, even though we get plenty of time to get to know them and understand what they went through. I wonder if this is some particular disconnect between Grann’s style of writing and my brain – I’ve noticed this in his other books I’ve read, and most other readers don’t seem to have this issue.