John Ball

A partially decomposed body of a young woman is discovered in a park in Pasadena, California. The woman was strangled but not sexually assaulted. The police suspect she might be a missing heiress who disappeared over a year ago, but dental records prove them wrong. But who is she? And is there a...

Virgil Tibbs, the cool, highly competent black detective of the Pasadena Police Department, returns one day to his bachelor apartment to find that it has been expertly stripped to the bare walls - not a thing remains to show that he has ever lived there. At headquarters he is given a cryptic...

Johnny Get Your Gun (also known as Death for a Playmate) is the third in the Virgil Tibbs mystery series that began with In the Heat of the Night. In this story, a nine-year-old boy, lonely after a family move, shoots an older child who stole something from him, thus igniting the militant blacks...