'The Manchurian Candidate' by Richard Condon

The Manchurian Candidate, Richard Condon (4.5)

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time! While the start of the book is creepy and hard to read (when is brain-washing easy?), the middle and end are riveting. After seeing the movie years ago (Frank Sinatra/Angela Lansbury version, of course), I had forgotten many of the twists and turns that make the book so enjoyable. Without giving too much away, the story follows a hero from the Korean War who has returned to his extremely dysfunctional family. Quickly the story flashes back to his patrol and how the troops were really were kidnapped and brainwashed by Chinese and Russian agents. The reader is not sure what the end game is for the spies, but it seems clear that the hero is being set-up to murder someone important at their behest. The tension and intrigue are thick as you follow his interactions. One of the interesting bits of writing is how dislikable the main character is – normally a turn-off for most readers. Condon did a good job of having a character (i.e. horrible mother) to blame for his lack of empathy and a real hero (Major Marco) to follow.

'Killers of the Flower Moon' by David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann  (3.0)

While I am glad I read this book, I was somewhat disappointed in it.  The subject was new to me – the FBI’s investigation of the systematic deaths of a tribe of American Indians in the 1920’s- and quite intriguing. The common emotion when reading the history is outrage and disbelief. It’s hard to imagine such obvious murders being ignored, regardless of their ethnicity. Unfortunately the way the book flows; it was not nearly as riveting as it should have been. The author seems to draw out some elements and move too quickly through others. Additional murders are briefly discussed in the last chapters that would have added to the reader’s anxiety during the main investigation. Oddly, even the title seems misleading. This investigation was obviously not the ‘birth of the FBI’ and the ‘killers of the flower moon’ seems like a forced description. Overall I wanted to like this book more than I did – it felt like a New Yorker article more than a book.