John Ball (novelist)

John Dudley Ball Jr. (July 8, 1911 – October 15, 1988)

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Life

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Ball was born in

Ball's Last Plane Out consists of two stories which share characters and then meld together. The first involves a group of travelers in a troubled Third World country, waiting for the last plane out, which they hope will carry them to safety. The second story is shared by an aviation buff who is given his chance to increase his flying skills by the airline that has been built by the pilot of the first story.

He died in 1988 and was buried at the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Magic

While in college he performed as a semi-professional magician under the name "Jacques Morintell" and "Howduzi".^[2][3] He was listed in the "Who's Who in Magic" in the May 1933 issue of The Sphinx: An Independent Magazine for Magicians published from March 1902 through March 1953)^[4] and contributed an article called "Further Ideas" to The Sphinx in 1937.^[5]

Bibliography

Virgil Tibbs series

Novels

• In the Heat of the Night,
  Harper & Row
  Publishers, 1965
• The Cool Cottontail, Harper & Row Publishers, 1966
• Johnny Get Your Gun,
  ISBN 0316079456
  • Republished as Death for a Playmate, Bantam 1972.
• Five Pieces of Jade, 1972
• The Eyes of Buddha, Little, Brown, 1976.
• Then Came Violence,
  ISBN 0385157266
• Singapore, Dodd, Mead, 1986,
  ISBN 0396087639

• "One for Virgil Tibbs" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Feb 1976)
• "Virgil Tibbs and the Cocktail Napkin" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Apr 1977)
• "Virgil Tibbs and the Fallen Body" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Sep 1978)
• "Good Evening Mr. Tibbs" (published in Murder California Style, 1987)

Others

• Operation Springboard (aka Operation Space); Duell, Sloan and Pearce; 1958.
• Judo Boy; Duell, Sloan and Pearce; 1964.
• Rescue Mission,
  Harper & Row
  , 1966.
• Arctic Showdown: an Alaskan Adventure, 1966.
• Miss One Thousand Spring Blossoms, 1968.
• Last Plane Out, 1970.
• The First Team,
  ISBN 0-316-07947-2
  , 1971
• The Fourteenth Point, Little, Brown and Company,
  ISBN 0-316-07949-9
  , 1973.
• Mark One: The Dummy, 1974.
• The Winds of Mitamura, 1975.
• Phase Three Alert; Little, Brown & Company;
  ISBN 0316079375
  , 1977.
• Police Chief, 1977.
• A Killing in the Market, Doubleday and Company, 1978.
• The Mystery Story (edited), Penguin Books;
  ISBN 0140050566
  , 1978.
• The Murder Children, 1979.
• Trouble for Tallon, 1981.
• Chief Tallon and the S.O.R., 1984.
• Murder California Style (edited), 1987.
• The Kiwi Target, 1988.
• The Van: A Tale of Terror, 1989 (released posthumously).

References

• ISBN 0-911682-20-1
  .