In 1972 during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a group of intruders abducted Jean McConville, the 38 year old mother of ten, and she was never seen again. It was not until 2003 that her remains were unearthed on a beach. Then, in 2013, Dolours Price died. She was a front line soldier for the IRA, who, in a secret oral history project had confessed to her involvement in the death of Jean McConville. But at the heart of this story is Gerry Adams, who ordered the killing. This is a chilling story, superbly told by an award winning New Yorker staff writer.
This is the incredible true crime story of McNamara’s relentless drive to solve the identity of the GSK, a rapist and murderer who terrorized California for a 10-year period. McNamara’s writing will draw you in and you will be hard-pressed to put this book down. A blogger, wife, mother, writer, tragically McNamara died in her sleep before the book was published just months before the criminalist, she had been working closely with, solved the crime and the GSK was arrested 40 years after his crime spree ended.
A finalist for the National Book Award, Killers of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and The Birth of The FBI (Doubleday, $28.95), by David Grann, chronicles the mysterious deaths by gunshot and poison of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma during the 1920s. As Grann tries to put the pieces of this mystery together, he uncovers a forgotten history. Though we are first led to believe that just one person, acting out of greed, is responsible for the entire rash of killings, Grann soon wonders if more people were behind these heinous acts. Because the details of these crimes were so peculiar, the case prompted a need for a federal agency, and the FBI was born. Did that help the Osage at all? Grann’s presentation of the evidence, the investigation, and the court proceedings is riveting. But it’s his account of the ongoing repercussions of the killings, his interviews with members of the impoverished Osage, and his depiction of Indigenous life in this country today, that reveal the truly shocking crime.
