John Ball: Death for a Playmate (USA 1987)

From the Publisher:
Young Johnny McGuire decides to settle a score with a friend -- using his father's. 38 Colt revolver. But after a botched attempt, he flees to the ghetto only to get involved in a scuffle with some loca toughs. When the smoke clears, one of ther dead, Johnny's on the run, and the police suddenly have a nine-year-old fugitive on their hands.

Enter Virgil Tibbs. Cool-headed and brilliant he's got some different notions on who kill whom, but he's got to locate Johnny to prove them. What follows is a desperate search through the blistering streets of Pasadena, Disneyland, and the Angels' ballpark -- as the black homicide detective applies his legendary prowess to this most deadly and difficult case.

John Ball: Death for a Playmate. A Virgil Tibbs Novel. Originally published as Johnny Get Your Gun. PaperJacks, ISBN: 0770105947, 152 p., $3.50.

John Ball: Johnny Get your Gun (UK 1970)

From the Publisher:
JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN is a first-class suspense thriller involving a nine-year-old boy and John Ball's cool, brilliant, black homicide detective, Virgil Tibbs, hero of the highly successful IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and THE COOL COTTONTAIL.

Alone in his bedroom, Johnny McGuire turned on his transistor radio. In the few weeks that he and his parents had been in Pasadena Johnny had made few acquaintances and no friends. In his lonely young life the radio had opened the door to a magnificent new world. Seated on the edge of the bed clutching the small set he discovered a world where people played music for him to listen to and told him, game-by-game, what was happening in the big league matches.

The radio had been the only gift that his parents could afford for his ninth birthday and already Johnny seemed old enough to understand why. He knew that life wasn't always fair, that there was little money to spend, that sometimes his father was angry, and often afraid.

This is the story, as only John Ball could tell it, of what happens when an older and bigger boy steals Johnny's proudest possession and Johnny sets out to even the score armed with his father's -38 Colt revolver. Set against a background of black-white conflict in Pasadena with poor whites and black militants, of distrust between rich and poor whites, it also brings to light the highly urgent and topical problem of gun control in America. There are riots, brutalities, a murder, an action-packed chase through Disneyland and a heartwarming and heart-breaking scene at the end of the book in the baseball park of the California Angels.

But the most important issue, described with sincerity and sensitivity by the author, is the terror and confusion in the mind of a nine-year-old boy - frightened, alone, hurt by the hatred around him, a fugitive from justice.

JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN touches on some of the most urgent problems facing America today and is written by one of America's most accomplished storytellers.

John Ball: Johnny Get your Gun. London: Michael Joseph, 1970, ISBN: 0718106997, 191 p., £1.50.