This is the fifth in the Virgil Tibbs series which begins with [In the Heat of the Night] In the books, as opposed to the movie and TV versions, Tibbs is a detective in Los Angeles. He is well respected, his deductive reasoning powers are Holmesian, and he gets assigned to the trickiest cases. He has a reputation, because his story has been told on the big screen by this time the events of this book take place, and people know his name. (One woman he introduced himself to gave him a "Yeah, right! You're Virgil Tibbs. And I'm Dionne Warwick" sort of response, until he showed her his ID.) His partners, in work and in life, are Japanese Americans, and he has an affinity for Far Eastern things. His knows great music, of many genres, and not just the standards, either. I enjoyed his company and his thought processes as he worked to sort out two cases--the death of a young woman whose decomposing body is found in a remote area of a local park, and the disappearance of one of the "Rose Princesses" who walked out of an official luncheon gathering and has not been seen or heard from for a year. Could they be the same person? My only quibble with Ball's style is that he can't seem to let any character speak without first telling us what's going through the person's mind. ( )