Black Gold

by Matt Braun

Book Overview

The Osage Indians lost their ancestral freedom on a windswept reservation in Oklahoma. Now, in the Roaring Twenties, the land is spewing black gold; oil has been found, and every Osage owns a share of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250160413
• ISBN13: 9781250160416
• Release Date: January 2018
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.8" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Workmanlike 1920's thriller

A note of caution to lovers of the Western lured by the name of genre luminary Braun -it is not really a Western .The setting is prohibition era Oklahoma and horses have long since given way to the car as transportation while machine guns have replaced the six shooter.It is similar to another Braun novel , The Overlords, in being a tale of the FBI against organised crime . The book is based on true events which took place in Oklahoma in the early 1920's when the discovery of oil on Osage Indian land in Oklahoma triggered a vast increase in tribal wealth .Osage law decreed that oil royalties had to be shared equally among all members of the tribe and the nation's citizens became in today's terms multi millionaires .A series of murders of Osage people attracted the notice of the FBI and Special Agent Gordon is sent to investigate .He meets with opposition from a local law enforcement system riddled with corruption and racism but pursues his investigations doggedly with the aid of a honest US Mashall .He uncovers a wholesale murder plot orchestrated by Big Bill Hicks ,the local political boss acting in cahoots with a ruthless bootlegegr Henry Grammer .There is plentiful action -including a torture scene not for the squeamish among its readers -before its denouement is reached Braun books still contain a bit too many dollops of ill digested research for my taste but this is slick and satisfying with a decidedly unflattering picture of Hoover ,then the FBI Deputy Director ,here shown as a bureaucrat and political wheeler dealer but wholly lacking in field experience .Satisfying novel of the WEest rather than a Western and a good fast paced read