John Ball (American author)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Dudley Ball (1911-1988), writing as "John Ball", was an American author best known for novels involving the character Virgil Tibbs, first introduced in 1965 in In the Heat of the Night. Tibbs was an African-American police detective from Pasadena who in the first book of the series must solve a murder in a racist small town in the American South. That novel won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America and was made into a movie of the same name starring Sidney Poitier.
Ball's arguably most underappreciated novel, however, was the political thriller The First Team, a masterpiece of Cold War intrigue, military operations, and what-if? writing. In the 1960's and 1970's, the genre of political thrillers included writers such as Allen Drury (who wrote Advise and Consent in 1959), Fletcher Knebel (who wrote Seven Days in May), and Edwin Corley (The Jesus Factor). These writers combined a healthy dose of politics, paranoia, and traditional hero characterization to thrill mostly male readers coping with the notion that everything is not all as it seems in Washington, DC (nor in Moscow, London, or Peking/Beijing). Pre-dating Watergate and a creature of the Cold War, these novels were the staples of airport bookstores.
John Ball's The First Team, written in 1971, concerned the idea that the USA has been invaded by the Soviet Union without the USSR having to fire a shot. The takeover is possible because of widespread cultural malaise. Undermined by Hippies and anti-war protestors, corrupt military-industrial complex producers who created faulty military hardware, weak-willed US Senators, and the superpower that was the USSR's propaganda machine (not to mention the Vietnam War's hangover), the USA was unable to defend against Soviet power.
The leader of the occupation forces is an iron-willed Soviet bureaucrat, backed up by a vicious Soviet Colonel. US White House interpreter Raleigh Hewitt, kept at his post by the invaders, comes to be recruited into a secret underground resistance organization called "The First Team." It turns out that the fall of the United States wasn't altogether unforseen, and this resourceful band of patriots schemes to free the USA from USSR Stalinist-like rule.
Pre-dating Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, this book contains details about the USA's nuclear submarines, which come to play a role in saving the USA from total defeat. The book combines fast-paced action, Clancy-like attention to accurate details, and plot twists and turns as well as strong characterization typical of Ball's In the Heat of the Night.
The First Team appeared more or less simulataneously with "Vandenberg" by Oliver Lange, dealing with the same theme of a Soviet-occupied United States, but far more pessimistically - with resistance (at least as mentioned in the book) restricited to a small group of oddballs in a corner of New Mexico. It is unclear which of the two influenced the other, or if they were written indepndently of each other. They both are clearly part of the genre of Invasion literature, like The Battle of Dorking in 19th Century Britain.
Another book by Ball, Last Plane Out, is two separate stories, which share some common characters but otherwise are completely distinct. The first involves a group of travelers in a troubled Third World country, waiting for the last plane out, which they hope will carry them to safety. The second story focused more on one man, an aviation buff who is given his chance to learn to fly by an airline for which he has done a favor.
Ball was born in Schenectady, New York, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended college at 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. John Dudley Ball lived in Encino, California, and died in 1988.
