Publication Date March 4, 2025

I admit it. I am a fan of the true crime genre, and really enjoy when authors really, really KNOW their subject. And I generally check out the author’s (or authors’) biography, especially when I set out to read an author’s work for the first time. Another thing about me: I lived in Southern California in the last century, and hate it when authors (of either nonfiction or fiction) go off the rails writing about that time and place (partly why I am a huge fan of T. Jefferson Parker, Robert Crais, and Michael Connelly: they KNOW their stuff!

So a new book entitled Black Tunnel White Magic (subtitle:A Murder, a Detective’s Obsession, and ’90s Los Angeles at the Brink) caught my eye, and I had to check out the authors, Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough. Jackson was with the LAPD until his retirement in 2013, and his legendary expertise in homicide had a 34-year career with the Los Angeles Police Department, before retiring in 2013. He is a known homicide expert, as well as a highly-regarded detective with extensive expertise (so much that he has been a consultant for Michael Connelly), OK, so he sounds like he’d have a lot to contribute! Matthew McGough never worked in law enforcement, but as a former attorney and the author of The Lazarus Files, which is a riveting story of a cold case involving a long-time LAPD police officer who was convicted of murdering her ex-boyfriend’s wife and was convicted TWENTY-SIX YEARS later. (If you’re a true crime fan, check it out!

Thanks to Mulholland Books and NetGalley, I received a copy of Black Tunnel White Magic, which tells the story of Ron Baker, a straight-A student at UCLA who was found stabbed to death in a tunnel (the “Manson Tunnel,” filled “satanic graffiti) wearing a pentagram pendant around his neck. The tunnel was very near the infamous Spahn Ranch, former home of Charles Manson and his “family.”

Ron Baker’s case was truly a mystery, but it was solved and the murderers were convicted. Following his retirement, Rick Jackson decided to tell the story of the murder, the investigation, and the subsequent trial. The book is very well written and recommended for both true crime fans, and fans of police procedurals (as well as anyone curious about LA around the time of the Rodney King incident and the “Satanic Panic.”