The Kiwi Target

by John Dudley Ball

Sent to New Zealand by his company to avert a hostile takeover, Peter Ferguson stumbles upon love, murder and laundered money. Then when he discovers a multi-million dollar scheme to turn a stretch of beautiful coastline into a parade of neon signs liquor stores and casinos, Ferguson thinks he can see through muscle men, lawyers and policemen all the way to a Chnese syndicate in Hong Kong.

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1988

About the author

John Dudley Ball writing as John Ball, was an American writer best known for mystery novels involving the African-American police detective Virgil Tibbs. He was introduced in the 1965 In the Heat of the Night where he solves a murder in a racist Southern small town. It won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America and was made into an Oscar-winning film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier; the film had two sequels, and spawned a television series several decades later, none of which were based on Ball's later Tibbs stories. He also wrote under the name John Ball Jr..

Ball was born in Schenectady, New York, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He wrote for a number of magazines and newspapers, including the Brooklyn Eagle. For a time he worked part-time as a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, was trained in martial arts, and was a nudist. In the mid 1980s, he was the book review columnist for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Ball lived in Encino, California, and died there in 1988.

Reviews

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

I love this kind of novel. It is part manhunt, part police procedural, part corporate politics, part real estate scam, part romance, and dozens of other little pieces. The characters are a little shallow but enagaing. The extensive cast is used primarily to drive the plot. Ball devised an effective story where three different elements slowly converge to a resolution.