LAbyrinth
A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
LA, 1997. The city is restless and simmering with tension. In two seemingly unconnected attacks, rap superstars Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. are brutally murdered. Across town, a black off-duty cop is gunned down by a white undercover cop in broad daylight.
Award-winning journalist Randall Sullivan's searing investigation uncovers a mass of connections to Suge Knight and his infamous label Death Row Records. But as Sullivan follows his leads into the darkest corners of the city, he finds the case thwarted at every turn by the LAPD itself - and realises that he is caught in a web of police corruption that spreads wider than he could have ever imagined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sullivan (The Price of Experience) strikes again in the arena of California true crime, exploring the sordid world of big money, gangsta rap, guns and drugs. Opening with the shooting of a black man by a white man during a traffic incident, Sullivan underscores the not-so-well-known racial tempest brewing on the West Coast especially when he reveals that the shooter was an undercover narcotics investigator and the man killed was an off-duty L.A.P.D. officer who moonlighted for the disreputable Death Row Records. From here, Sullivan outlines the bad and the ugly of the music industry: mafioso-style music label management; the unsolved murders of rap superstars Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.; and a dizzying series of binary oppositions Crips vs. Bloods; West Coast rappers vs. East Coast rappers; Death Row Records' exec Suge Knight vs. Puffy Combs of Bad Boy Records, etc. Unfortunately, the basic material isn't exactly new; journalists Ronin Ro and Cathy Scott, among others, have previously covered the murders of Shakur and B.I.G. Still, Sullivan's reportorial writing style accurately reflects the investigative work of homicide gumshoe Russell Poole while building the drama within the truly labyrinthine political coverups, cop-to-criminal crossovers and the breaks in the L.A.P.D.'s code of silence. Photos not seen by PW.
