Labyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implications of Death Row Records' Suge [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In any case, this is an excellent read. Sullivan takes a very complex tale with many players and makes it easy to follow. The writing is clear, crisp and clean. His logical analysis of the controversies in the investigation seem very sound. This is not a book that will titillate people with a voyeuristic look at the rap lifestyle. He keeps the focus very tightly on the murder investigations and the connections between rogue LAPD officers and Death Row records.

I guess I have only two quibbles. First, the book needs an index. We get a timeline (very helpful), a cast of characters, even recommended further readings. But an index would be nice. Second, and this is not Sullivan's fault in anyway, this is a very grim tale. Evil goes unpunished, the truth is suppressed by authorities and good guys are in short supply.

People who lived through the L.A. police corruption scandals of earlier eras would find much to recognize in this tale.

The book starts with Russell Poole, a decorated detective with basically impeccable credentials, investigating a shooting in the San Fernando Valley. The shooter and the victim both turned out to be police officers: the shooter, Frank Lyga, was a white undercover narcotics detective, the man killed, Kevin Gaines, a black patrolman. When the detectives went to the house the black policeman was living in, they were a bit taken aback to discover it was a mansion in Beverly Hills. The man's girlfriend was Suge Knight's estranged wife. Knight, the owner of Death Row Records, had an unsavory reputation for intimidation, extortion, drug dealing, and murder anyway, so the police were somewhat taken aback.

Soon, Poole agrees to become the lead detective in the investigation of the shooting of Wallace mentioned above, and discovers that there may be LAPD officers involved in the killing, or at least working for Suge Knight. Soon, that part of the investigation is derailed, and Poole is ordered by superiors to look in other directions that he's sure will be fruitless, and of course they turn out to be. Meanwhile connections to other incidents, including the killing of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, surface, but nothing's pursued.

The minutae of the story does at times bog it down. This does one bad thing in terms of the book: it serves to obscure the author's basic message, which is that the political leadership in Los Angeles and its minority-run suburbs (notably Compton) are unwilling to investigate people like Suge Knight too closely, and the Los Angeles media is willing to cover for them because to do otherwise would damage various minority (read black) politicians and city leaders. Prominent in this category is Bernard Parks, the controversial now ex-chief of police. Sullivan has him basically uninterested in corruption among black police officers when he was in charge of the Internal Affairs division, and later when he was chief. The mayor, and Maxine Waters, our most prominent local black politician (she's a congresswoman from Compton and South-Central LA) are also implicated, if not in corruption, then in condoning it.

The last part of the book, however, was a surprise for me. When Poole was investigating the connections between Death Row Records and various black police officers who were illegally working for the company providing security, one of the officers involved was a gang task force detective named Rafael Perez. For those not up to date on LA current affairs, Perez was caught with several kilos of cocaine, and turned state's evidence in return for a reduced sentence. The subsequent investigation led to what's been known as the Rampart police scandal, after the Rampart division where it occurred. His testimony got many (hundreds) of people released from prison, and has resulted in the city paying millions (some estimate it's going to run into the hundreds of millions or even more) in damages to the alleged victims. Perez himself is something of a chamelion (black to blacks, latino to latinos, colorless to whites) and apparently has been fabricating at least some of his allegations, but meanwhile he's worked himself a deal such that he's already negotiating a release from prison. Poole's investigation seemed to show that Perez's allegations should be carefully viewed, but the higher-ups in the LAPD wouldn't listen, and the whole thing has blown up in their faces. Even worse, they shut down the gang task force that Perez was part of, and predictably gang homicides increased almost immediately.

This is a tangled, convoluted, difficult book. People get killed left and right, and most of those killed aren't exactly angels themselves. Notorious B.I.G., for instance, was a drug dealer before he became a rapper, and Tupac shouldn't need any introduction. The implication that the police are or were running interference for the people who killed them, however, is pretty horrifying, and the author presents some evidence that one cop should be at least looked at in connection with Notorious B.I.G.'s murder itself, though an associate of his is the likely shooter. While this is troubling, it's the racial politics that's the most aggravating to me. One person is quoted as saying that the L.A. Times, for instance, wouldn't investigate the story further because they didn't want to be involved in bringing down an African-American police chief (Bernard Parks). This sort of thing has to stop. While Suge Knight is black, yes, so were most if not all of this victims. Failing to demand justice on that rationale is insane, and if the allegations in the book have merit, they should be investigated thoroughly.