The Cool Cottontail

No. 2 in the Virgil Tibbs detective series. Until I picked up one of the later entries a year or so ago, I had no idea there was a series about the amazing Mr. Tibbs of [In the Heat of the Night] fame. I enjoy him as a character very much, but I quibble a bit with the author's handling. In this outing, Virgil is at home in Pasadena, where he is called upon to investigate the death of an unidentified man whose body turns up in the pool at a nudist park. The man is appropriately naked, but not a member of the club, and not recognized by anyone. Furthermore, he is obviously a "cottontail", i.e. someone whose untanned nether region betrays him as not a nudist. This set-up has a lot of potential, and Ball (who was a nudist himself, I show more understand) makes the most of it, introducing us to a lovely normal American family who rarely put on clothes. After facing the unmitigated racism of the Deep South in [In the Heat of the Night], Virgil is on his home turf, wrestling to act natural in the presence of naked white women who aren't a bit bothered by his color or his gender---the irony is juicy indeed. Unfortunately most of the detecting goes on off the page, and the reader has no idea what Virgil is thinking, or even what leads he's following much of the time. He explains it all to us after the fact, so there's too much telling; I'd rather be shown. Still a worthwhile read for the social commentary. show less