Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Published 2017 · 85,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · History, Journalism & Reportage, Mystery & Crime, Nonfiction
How hard is Killers of the Flower Moon to read?
Killers of the Flower Moon scores 23 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Historical and legal terms. Accessible.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 25 out of 100
- Concrete crime narrative with historical analysis.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with archival research and investigative detail.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Three-part structure reveals progressively deeper conspiracies.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Flower Moon as symbol of Osage vulnerability.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- The FBI's heroic narrative undermined by Grann's research.
- Resolution withholding: 22 out of 100
- Each 'solution' reveals a deeper crime. Full truth never reached.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Three nested narratives, each reframing the previous.
How Killers of the Flower Moon is regarded
Killers of the Flower Moon holds a literary regard score of 50 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.