Author. A modern crime novelist, he wrote the ‘Virgil Tibbs’ series of books about a Black homicide investigator from Pasadena. The most well renowned was “In The Heat Of The Night” (1965), becoming a theatrical film in 1967 starring Sidney Portier and Rod Steiger and a television series in the late 1980s which featured Howard Rollins, Jr. and Carroll O’Connor. This book won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Crimewriters’ Association’s Golden Dagger Award and was named one of the top one hundred mystery novels of the century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. (bio by: Theologianthespian)