GOOD EVENING, MR. TIBBS – As promised, I recently obtained a copy of author John Ball’s final story featuring his iconic African American homicide detective Virgil Tibbs. Yes, THAT Virgil Tibbs, introduced in the 1965 novel and 1966 movie In the Heat of the Night.
Roughly ten days back I reviewed John Ball’s subsequent novels and short stories about the brilliant and coolly professional Virgil Tibbs. This final short story, Good Evening, Mr. Tibbs, followed the 1986 Tibbs novel Singapore.
Unlike that novel, this tale depicts Virgil in his home territory of Pasadena, California. (It was only in the movies that Tibbs worked in Philadelphia and San Francisco.) In the middle of the night a woman’s dead body is found in the center of the street. Circumstances prompt a call to bring in Pasadena’s senior Homicide Detective – our man Virgil. Continue reading
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