In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck?
Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker’s two male roommates, one Black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King.
In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly’s beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it.
I know there are plenty of Bookstagrammers/book bloggers who don’t review nonfiction books/true crime & I can definitely understand why. You build up a vocabulary writing SFF/genre book reviews…you talk about world-building & character development. Plot twists. Secondary characters.
That all goes out the window when you’re reading about real people, and the terrible things that happened to them. But I have reviewed one other true crime book (I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK), and I really wanted to get something down for BLACK TUNNEL WHITE MAGIC for a few reasons (beyond the fact that it’s a really good book!)
One, this was the first book sent to me for review by Mulholland Books & that’s just a huge deal to me! I’ve been filling my shelves with books from that imprint these last few years & so to get my first review copy from them was really special.
Two, the connection to Bosch is really cool to me! Rick Jackson is a retired detective & his work partly inspired Michael Connelly’s famous character, Harry Bosch. Reading the Bosch books is somewhat daunting to me, and I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever tackle. I’ve read THE POET by Connelly and liked it well enough. I really struggled to get into his book THE LATE SHOW & set it aside (but I am wildly excited for the upcoming show based on that series, “Ballard”). So while I’m not 100% sure Connelly’s books are my thing (I’m still going to try some more!), “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy” are two of my favorite crime shows! I started watching “Bosch” in the early days of Covid & the show really became a big comfort watch to me over these last 4-5 years.
So it’s wild to read this book & see Michael Connelly (called “Mike” back in the day) pop up as a Los Angeles crime reporter, and think about all the twists & turns that happened, to lead to this book being written & with a foreword by Michael Connelly!
It’s possible I had heard of this case somewhere along the way, but I’m not quite sure. The story begins in June, 1990, when the body of a college student, Ron Baker, is discovered in a creepy train tunnel in Los Angeles. The tunnel is in Chatsworth Park, and apparently in close proximity to where Charles Manson & his followers lived. Ron had been stabbed & had his throat cut.
Clues at the scene are sparse, but in the early days of the investigation (and this book spans decades), police honed in on the pentagram pendant that Ron wore. That & his activities with a Wiccan group had people questioning whether this was some type of ritual murder.
But the more digging Detective Ron Jackson & his partner, Frank Garcia do, the more suspicious they become about Ron’s two roommates, Duncan Martinez and Nathan Blalock.
What follows is a pretty exhaustive & comprehensive look at the investigative process, along with dozens and dozens of pages of interview transcripts.
It’s a really interesting moment in history & the authors do a good job shining a light on the fractured relationship between the LAPD & the Black community at the time. As I mentioned, the investigation spans a decent length of time, which means the case is
ongoing during the protests in the aftermath of the Rodney King video being released, as well as after the O. J. Simpson trial.
There’s even some familiar names in the book, too, if you ever followed the O. J. Simpson trial in any way.
I was sort of internally cringing & bracing for the worst when the Rodney King video was first mentioned, but again, I think the authors confront things pretty head-on & don’t sugarcoat anything with regard to the culpability of the cops who beat Rodney King.
This was really well done, and I think BLACK TUNNEL WHITE MAGIC does the thing that more & more people these days (myself included) are hoping true crime will accomplish: honoring the victims instead of sensationalizing the crime.
This book is heavy on details & I think it could have perhaps been a touch shorter, but I was engaged the whole time. I read a significant portion of this via audiobook & I think Jim Meskimen was a great choice for the narrator. I imagine it’s a somewhat tall task, narrating a true crime book like this. But Meskimen manages to add enough emotional weight to the words, and also does a good job differentiating between the different people without resorting to “doing voices”, if that makes sense.
Big thanks to Mulholland Books & Hachette Audio for this one, I really enjoyed it!
Grimdark Dad 