Meet the Kellys by Chris Enss

 

First Line: When the outlaw duo of George "Machine Gun" Kelly and his wife, Kathryn Thorne, kidnapped Charles Urschel in July 1933, the couple, and their accomplices, made history.

George Kelly was a small-time bootlegger until he met Kathryn Thorne. Thorne was charming, strong-minded, and pretty. She was already an experienced criminal, divorced twice, and ready to marry a man who could give her the lavish lifestyle she'd always wanted. Put Kathyrn Thorne and George Kelly together, and the country got "Machine Gun" Kelly, one of the most notorious American gangsters during the Depression.

With Kathryn's connections and intelligence, the two were soon living large, but it wasn't enough. The couple plotted to kidnap an oil tycoon, and it worked. They collected the ransom and the attention of the country-- even the world-- and the FBI.

~

Going to see Bonnie and Clyde at a local drive-in was the start of my interest in the Great Depression and that era's gangsters. Bonnie and Clyde. Pretty Boy Floyd. John Dillinger. Ma Barker. Bugs Moran. I'm not quite sure why I found these gangsters to be so fascinating. I didn't think they were romantic. I certainly didn't want to emulate them. I think it probably had something to do with how people reacted to and survived the Great Depression. So, it's no wonder that when I heard about Meet the Kellys that I wanted to read it.

I was familiar with other books written by Chris Enss, so I was expecting a well-researched history of Kelly and Thorne. That's exactly what I got. Kathryn Thorne saw the potential in small-time bootlegger George Kelly to give her the lifestyle she had always craved. And with her gift of a machine gun to Kelly, history was made. The couple's endless road trips not only had me hearing some of the music from Bonnie and Clyde, but they almost made me carsick.

I learned quite a bit from this book. I'd forgotten how kidnapping had taken center stage for several of these gangsters, so much so that the government passed the Federal Kidnapping Act in an attempt to put an end to it. In true diva style, when everything disintegrated, Kathryn Thorne tried her best to keep herself and her parents out of jail. She was definitely what my family would refer to as a "piece of work." If you have any interest at all in this time period, Meet the Kellys is well worth a read. 

Meet the Kellys: The True Story of Machine Gun Kelly and His Moll Kathryn Thorne

by Chris Enss

eISBN: 9780806543079

Citadel Press © 2025

eBook, 272 pages

Non-Fiction

Rating: B+

Source: Net Galley

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

First Line: In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma.

After oil was discovered beneath their land in the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. They built mansions, rode in chauffeured limousines, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off, and the family of one Osage woman in particular, Mollie Burkhart, was a prime target.

This may have been one of the last remnants of the Wild West, but some people began to notice these deaths. When they tried to investigate they, too, began to die. When the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI was called in on one of its first major homicide investigations. When the case was badly bungled, a desperate young J. Edgar Hoover put former Texas Ranger Tom White in charge. White put together an undercover team, and with plenty of hard work, they began to uncover a conspiracy that will make your blood run cold.

Author David Grann spent years doing research and uncovering new evidence in writing Killers of the Flower Moon. Since I was a fan of his from reading The Lost City of Z, I expected this latest book to be the sort of non-fiction I love: the kind that reads like the best fiction. I was not disappointed. What I did not expect was just how infuriated I would become by reading it.

Having been a huge horse racing fan when I was a teenager, I knew about the wealth of the Osage Nation in the 1920s. One of the Osage owned a winner of the Kentucky Derby. But that knowledge was just cursory. I had no idea how rich the Osage really were, and I certainly didn't have a clue that the government didn't trust them with all that money. I should not have been so naive. It had to madden many whites that, although they'd shoved the Osage onto a piece of land they deemed unfit for themselves, oil would be discovered and the Osage would turn out to be the wealthiest people in the world. The one way they had of trying to horn in on this wealth was by declaring that the Osage were not fit to use their own money wisely. In many cases whites were put in charge of the families' money, and they gave their wards allowances (and themselves large fees for their business knowledge). 

Why on earth should I be so surprised that this greed would escalate to murder? It is the natural progression after all. To this day, the Osage have trust issues, and who can blame them? They tried to get dozens of murders investigated, but instead the killings were covered up. What Grann did in Killers of the Flower Moon was to dig deeper and deeper and expose just how huge the problem actually was. As I read, words like horrifying, unspeakable, and several others flashed through my mind. 

This is an uncomfortable read for anyone with a conscience; nevertheless, it is a fascinating and important one. I highly recommend it. Although Killers of the Flower Moon won't be available until April 2017, I wanted to give you all a heads up about one of the best books I read in 2016. It's a mesmerizing true historical mystery that grabs you and won't let you go.   

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

eISBN: 9780385534253

Doubleday © 2017

eBook, 352 pages

Non-Fiction, Standalone

Rating: A+

Source: Net Galley