The Cool Cottontail — John Dudley Ball

Sun Valley Lodge, run by Forrest Nunn and his wife Emily, with the assistance of their three children—Linda, a most attractive teenager, her twenty-four-year-old brother George, and small Carole—was in a nudist park which had an excellent reputation (except with a few people) and a most careful screening of members, so that sudden and murderous death had certainly never intruded upon it before. Though the body floating in the pool was nude, it was not the body of one of the members. The dead man was well-to-do, perhaps even prominent. But not only was he nude; his clothing was nowhere to be found; and someone had tried to prevent his being identified. And, oddly enough, no one came forward to identify him, or to report that a man like the dead man was missing. It was going to be a hard murder to solve. But Virgil Tibbs, moving expertly and patiently, was determined to solve it—and even to get used to carrying on his investigations in the midst of a nudist park, which added certain problems of its own. Tibbs is a detective who won friends and admirers immediately—and will go on to win more.