David Grann's thing is not to write for the sake of writing in the manner of the most professional of writers. Your thing is to have something to tell and get on with it to tell it in the best way in the time necessary. Maintaining that independence when one could produce books like churros to feed the conspiracy thriller industry has its own merits. Maybe because Grann doesn't want to die of success Dan Brown or simply because, going back to the beginning, this guy writes whenever he wants as long as he finds a good story to offer the world.
This is how all his books arrived with an unpredictable cadence. And yet everyone remembers him when he releases a new book there in the USA and the same thing begins to happen in Europe or other places in the world. True crime has a great chronicler in David Grann. It's a shame that we don't take a tour of deep Spain to tell so many stories of humanity unleashed by the most unexpected ambitions and follies... Meanwhile, we'll have to settle for Say Caprio embody some of its most emblematic characters.
Top 3 recommended novels by David Grann
Killers of the moon
Certain details show that the Americans are the fucking masters of the story. From the skinning of every Indian told as a process of gentle conquest of the XNUMXth Cavalry, to the ambush of the battleship Maine to drive Spain out of its last spaces in the Caribbean, to a cold war in which the whole world seemed to be indebted with the USA for keeping us safe from the perfidious USSR.
The point is that the governments made in the USA also have their work done behind closed doors... and thanks to institutions like the FBI everything happens in due order and concert...
In the XNUMXs, the Osage Indian community in Oklahoma had the highest per capita income in the world. The oil that lay beneath their properties made them millionaires: they built mansions, had private drivers and sent their children to study in Europe.
But a spiral of violence devastated this indigenous community when its members began to die and disappear under strange circumstances. The family of one Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her three sisters were murdered. One was poisoned, another was shot dead, and the third died in an explosion. Other members of the Osage died under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the crimes were also murdered.
When the death toll reached twenty-four, the newly inaugurated FBI decided to intervene and it was one of their first major homicide cases. After the investigation turned into a disaster, young director J. Edgar Hoover turned to former Texas commander Tom White to unravel the mystery. White established an undercover team, including a native agent in the group.
In this exciting true crime, which Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio will bring to the big screen, new secrets of one of the most sinister conspiracies against the indigenous community in the United States are revealed. As he did in Z, the Lost City, Grann immerses himself in a deep and exhaustive investigation to reveal one of the darkest and most ruthless episodes in North American History.
While in Spain we have Dioni or El lute with a traditional touch of struggle for survival from revenge against the rich, robbing banks in the United States is more epic. There are Robin Hood complexes in the bank robbers over there that are more marked by the contrast they represent with respect to a society that is more than capitalist. The point is that there were memorable ones, worthy of being put black on white.
The incredible story of bank robber Forrest Tucker gives the title to this collection of true crimes, three stories in which journalist David Grann demonstrates why he is considered the best non-fiction writer of the moment. If "The Old Man and the Gun" is the story of a robbery and prison escape artist who in his late seventies refuses to retire, "True Crime" follows the twisted investigation of a Polish police officer convinced that a novelist left clues in his work about a real murder.
"The Chameleon" tells how a French impostor assumes the identity of a missing boy in Texas and infiltrates his family to end up wondering who is deceiving whom. With these three characters, Grann shows that fiction is not the only way to find delirious stories where deception, cunning and an innate ability for crime determine the future of its protagonists.
Z, the lost city
There are certain myths and mysteries that are cyclically renewed in the popular imagination, as well as in cinema and literature.
The Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis and El Dorado are probably the three magical locations in the world. Those that have derived the most in a rain of ink to present us with those locations where reality becomes a magic mirror in which our fantasies and desires, our thirst for knowledge and our desire to get closer to the esoteric are reflected.
Parallel to his recent film, in the book Z, the lost city, David Grann presents us with a documented log of the journey of the explorer Percy Fawcett through the deep Amazon, where the lost city with its gold mines was supposed to be.
To speak with full knowledge of the facts, David traveled in 2005 to the great South American river to collect feelings, ideas, comments from people and more faithful documentation. With all this he presented this work.
In Z, the lost city we travel with Percy Fawcett to the Amazon of 1925. And, honestly, the most interesting thing about the book, the null results in the location of the mysterious city and the dire consequences for the protagonist are already known, well It is more interesting to soak up that perspective of the tireless explorer, to feel captivated by that search that back in 1925 gave the expedition a fantastic touch still close to the reality of the moment, in a world without satellites or GPS, without the total connection that exists. currently.
Adventure of the real ones. Biography made into a novel to enjoy, get excited and recover sensations of trivial enjoyment of literature. Of course, the writing is exquisite, composing a narrative of carats not without lyricism. A good mix to enjoy and get away with.
