John Ball	The Cool Cottontail

First published in hardback by Harper & Row in the USA 1966, first published in UK by Micheal Joseph, 1967. First UK paperback by Pan, 1969. Later UK paperback by Hamlyn, 1979

Detective Virgil Tibbs, a specialist "investigator", is brought in to deal with a perplexing murder case. A naked male body is found floating in the pool of a nudist club. The man is initially unidentifiable - except as a non-naturist (or "cottontail") by virtue of his deep tan showing a clear patch of pale skin where he had obviously worn a swimming costume.

I am ashamed to admit that, while I had certainly heard of Virgil Tibbs, I'd never read any of John Ball's books before this one, and couldn't even name the author who had created the character. It seems that this is not unusual. There is very little information on the Web about John Ball beyond a list of his books and an enormous number of references to his first novel - the famous In The Heat Of The Night. After that book, and the equally successful film adaptation, it seems that Ball never managed to hit the spot again.

In The Heat Of The Night is a powerful film, and its portrayal of racism, bigotry and prejudice gets a rerun in The Cool Cottontail. Although the setting of the Deep South has been replaced by supposedly liberal California, Mister Tibbs still encounters many who expect a black man to be menial or a servant. Deliberately and explicitly, John Ball draws parallels between the snubs and slights experienced by Tibbs, and those experienced by nudists - although it is clear which are the more significant. Just as Virgil Tibbs is an embodiment of all that is good in a police officer - he is smart, intelligent, dedicated, polite and upright - so too the nudists in the story are paragons. Somehow, John Ball keeps the characters just on the believable side of saintly caricature, but occasionally one longs for a smidgeon of human fallibility or imperfection. The converse holds for most of the criminals - whose characters range from bad to appalling - but some are given a more complex personality.

The Cool Cottontail is an easy read, despite occasionally delving deep into procedures or evidence. The nudists, and their club, occupy a key role far more signifcant than the basic plot requires. The book is prefaced with a fulsome acknowledgement to American naturist organisations and clubs, and there is a wealth of detail of the operation and problems of the club which seem drawn from life - including the near-impossibility of singles being admitted to membership! This veracity is entirely understandable, once one knows that John Ball is better known in naturist history under his nuddie name of Donald Johnson. Ball's alter ego was a leading figure in the American Sunbathing Association, wrote The Nudists, co-wrote Nudist Society, created a huge archive of naturist material which has since formed the basis of the American Nudist Reference Library and did a great deal to promote nudism in the USA. I was unaware of the Ball/Johnson dual identity for some time, and, in the absence of specific mentions of it by either author, was doubtful until receiving authoritative information from Charles Daney.

My only real reservation about the portrayal of naturism is that the nudist family at the centre of the story are uniformly and strongly committed to the cause. As well as being amazingly youthful and healthy (despite drinking coffee by the gallon, eating sweet rolls and cakes at every opportunity and spending much of every day naked in the Pasadena sun, which would surely turn most people dehydrated, obese and wrinkled), from nine-year old Carole, through Linda (18) and George (24) to parents Forrest (46 going on 33) and Emily (48 going on 30), all are totally sold on the wonders of nude living. Perhaps it would have obstructed the flow of the story, but I'd have been interested to have had at least one scene where somebody wished for a more conventional life, or sincerely regretted the difficulties of non-naturist friends and grandparents. Still, this is fiction (don't naked and recently-killed bodies sink in fresh water?) but it's well-written fiction and an enjoyable read. Recommended.

Get a flavour of the book's treatment of nudists from these extracts.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

John Ball aka Donald Johnson

Born in 1911, John Dudley Ball Jr's occupations included music critic, commercial and WWII pilot, newspaper columnist and public relations director. Even being a full-time novelist could not keep him occupied, and he added became a Los Angeles County reserve Sheriff's deputy. There are a total of six Virgil Tibbs books, plus three Jack Tallon novels and a variety of stories set in the Far East, where he lived for a while. John Ball died in 1988. That's what you can find if you dig around on the Web. What you won't find is the highly-significant information that John Ball was a prominent naturist. Under the name Donald Johnson, Ball held various positions within organised naturism, including the presidency of the Western Sunbathing Association and editorship of Sunshine & Health. He was very concerned at the lack of a central information resource and archive of naturist publications, in desperation setting up his own extensive and comprehensive reference collection. This has been donated to the American Nudist Research Library - established since his death. A similar project was the authorship of scholarly works on social nudity: The Nudists (1959) and, jointly with sociologists William Hartman and Marilyn Fithian, Nudist Society (1970). Ball/Johnson was an aikido black belt, and an active member of both the Japanese-American Society and the Ananda Community.

I am indebted to Charles Daney for confirming that Ball and Johnson were one and the same, and for providing a generous amount of background information on this versatile and accomplished man.

Last updated 2005 November 3.
 
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Other content Copyright © author Tim Forcer

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