Columbo books
The play it all grew out of. The paperback novelisations that sold at railway stations in the seventies. Six novels in which the lieutenant investigates the Kennedy assassination. And a shelf of books about the show itself.
Spine width is a book’s weight in the show’s history, not its page count. The shelf scrolls sideways.
By the people who made it
Three books entitled to speak for the series: the text of the play, short stories by its co-creator, and Falk’s own memoir.
Prescription: Murder
The play the series grew out of. Columbo was played by seventy-year-old Thomas Mitchell, and it was his last role.
Just One More Thing
Not a chronological life but short anecdotal chapters: the army, the theatre, Cassavetes, the shoots. The title is the line.
The Columbo Collection
Twelve new cases the show’s co-creator wrote half a century after the character was born. It opens with Link’s own foreword, which begins in the spring of 1960, “the very point of origin”, and is dedicated to the memory of Richard Levinson, “my collaborator and best friend since the first day of junior high school.” Besides the trade edition there was a limited run of 325 cloth copies, signed and numbered by the author. The one work of fiction it makes sense to call canon.
The seventies novelisations
Popular Library paperbacks — retellings of episodes mixed with a couple of original plots. Collectors hunt them now.
Columbo
A Christmas Killing
The Dean's Death
Any Old Port in a Storm
By Dawn's Early Light
A Deadly State of Mind
Murder by the Book
Columbo and the Samurai Sword
The only book in the series issued in hardback.
Six novels by William Harrington
In the nineties the lieutenant was sent after the great American cases of the century rather than invented ones. The series was on ABC at the time.
Columbo: The Grassy Knoll
The Kennedy assassination.
Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders
Loosely on the Manson case.
Columbo: The Hoffa Connection
The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
Columbo: The Game Show Killer
A murder on a television quiz show.
Columbo: The Glitter Murder
Hollywood glitter with a body inside it.
Columbo: The Hoover Files
Hoover’s files. The last novel of the series.
Books about the show
Production history, clue analysis, academic studies — and one cookbook.
The Columbo Phile: A Casebook
The first substantial book about the show and still the benchmark: the classic episodes analysed, plus interviews with Falk, McGoohan, Link, Nimoy and McDowall.
Shooting Columbo
The most important book on the series since The Columbo Phile: the author got into the studio archives and interviewed directors, writers and producers. The story about the name on the ID card comes from here.
Unshot Columbo
Nineteen episodes that were nearly made — scripts that reached pre-production and were stopped.
Columbo Under Glass
Clues sorted by type: the ones that raise suspicion, and the ones that prove guilt.
Columbo: Class Struggle on TV Tonight
A French sociological study of exactly why the killers are always rich while the lieutenant earns eleven thousand a year.
Columbo: Paying Attention 24/7
An academic look at attention to detail as a method.
Columbo: A Rhetoric of Inquiry with Resistant Responders
On the mechanics of an interrogation that does not look like one.
Columbo, Columbo
A German retrospective, including the German dub.
Cooking With Columbo
A cookbook built from the series: chilli, hard-boiled eggs and recipes from the cast. Sounds like a joke, assembled seriously, episode by episode.
Covers from Open Library. 11 of 26 shown: the rest have no scan in open catalogues.