The Eyes of Buddha - Virgil Tibbs, Bk 5 Author:John Ball The partially decomposed body of a young woman is discovered in an isolated, wooded section of a Pasadena park. Police are alerted - could this at last be Doris Friedkin, the heiress whose bizarre disappearance more than a year ago has frustrated their most exhaustive efforts? Dental records quickly establish that the unidentifiable corpse is, a... more »t least, not Doris. But who is she? The young woman had been strangled but not sexually assaulted; by whom, and why? Again, what did become of Doris? Prodded by Doris's father, multimillionaire financier Herbert Friedkin, the police assign their best man to both cases. Enter Virgil Tibbs, celebrated black detective.
In this, the fifth of John Ball's novels about Virgil Tibbs, the hero of In the Heat of the Night must unravel two perplexing, seemingly impenetrable mysteries at once. With his usual calm reasoning and razor sharp perception, Tibbs reshapes the welter of "facts" accumulated by previous investigators of the two cases - and abruptly discovers astonishing connections between the two. His quest for an explanation takes Tibbs halfway around the world to Katmandu, Nepal, where, beneath the searing "eyes of Buddha" at the famed Monkey Temple, he learns the truth.
The grinding detail of homicide investigation is brought to life here as strikingly as the exotic Himalayan setting of the denouement. Readers willing to match their deductive powers and psychological perception with those of the master detective will find The Eyes of Buddha the most rewarding Virgil Tibbs adventure yet.« less