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Murder by the Book
Russian title: Убийство по книге · Russian version
A writing partnership breaks up: Jim Ferris, who actually writes the books, wants to work alone. His co-author Ken Franklin, who lives off the royalties and cannot write a word, is not ready for that news. The first episode of the series proper, directed by a twenty-four-year-old Steven Spielberg.
Editor’s rating — 9.5 out of 10.
- Number
- 3 of 69
- Aired
- September 15, 1971
- Running time
- 72 min
- Director
- Steven Spielberg
- Writer
- Steven Bochco
- Music
- Billy Goldenberg
The case
- The killer
- Jack Cassidy as Ken Franklin
- The victim
- Martin Milner as Jim Ferris and Barbara Colby as Lilly La Sanka
- Guest cast
- Jack Cassidy, Barbara Colby, Bernie Kuby, Haven Earle Haley, Martin Milner, Hoke Howell
Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.
The murder
Franklin and Ferris are the Mrs Melville mysteries, a brand rather than a partnership. Ferris does the work; Franklin does the lunches, the parties and the publicity, and takes half. When Ferris announces he is going solo, Franklin loses not an income stream but his entire life, because there is nothing underneath the persona.
The murder is elegant and cruel. Franklin drives Ferris to their country cabin, and while they are there has him telephone his wife in the city to say he is working late at the office. The call places Ferris alive and in Los Angeles at a moment when he is in fact two hours away with a gun pointed at him. Franklin shoots him the instant the receiver goes down.
Then he improves on it. He dumps the body at Ferris's own house, so the death reads as a gangland killing connected to the crime novels, and he telephones a ransom demand of his own to muddy the timeline further. Every element is borrowed from a plot — which is exactly the problem, because plots have authors.
How Columbo gets him
Columbo's first scene with Franklin is a masterclass in the show's method: he arrives full of admiration for the books, cannot remember which one he read, wants to know how writers get their ideas. Franklin, who has spent years pretending to be a novelist, cannot resist being asked about writing. He talks. He keeps talking through the whole film.
The lieutenant's actual objection is small and technical. If Ferris was killed in the city, why is there no trace of the journey he supposedly made? And why does a man phoning his wife to say he is staying late at the office sound like a man reading a line? Columbo does not raise these things as accusations; he raises them as things that are bothering him, which is worse.
Along the way the episode gives us Lilly La Sanka, the shopkeeper near the cabin who saw more than she should have and decides to blackmail Franklin. Her fate — dispatched with the same efficiency and considerably less planning — is what turns the film from a puzzle into something colder. Franklin is not a man who killed once under pressure. He is a man who will keep killing to protect the version of himself he has invented.
Worth knowing
- Spielberg was hired on the strength of his television work and was, by Falk's own account, treated with suspicion on day one and admiration by the end of the week.
- Levinson and Link had directed the first-filmed episode themselves, saw Spielberg's, and swapped the running order so that his went out first.
- Jack Cassidy would return twice more as a Columbo murderer, more than anyone except Patrick McGoohan and Robert Culp.
Verdict
The best entry point to the series and arguably its finest ninety minutes. Everything the show would do for three decades is already here, fully formed: the inverted structure, the class comedy, the killer who cannot stop performing, and an ending built on a detail rather than a chase.
Cassidy's Franklin is the definitive Columbo villain — charming, hollow, and so pleased with his own cleverness that he mistakes politeness for stupidity. The final scene, in which he learns which of his ideas was the good one, is as close to tragedy as the format gets.
What the people who made it said
Bochco came to the show as a beginner. Columbo ran inside an NBC wheel alongside McMillan & Wife and McCloud, and every slot needed writers. The plots, he says, were built by Levinson and Link themselves; the writer was handed the structure.
“That show put me on the map. I didn't know anything about that kind of writing — the intricate plotting of Columbo that Bill and Dick were masters at.”
Link talks about Spielberg without any reverence: a young director under contract to the studio who was given the first episode and had plenty explained to him about structure — but whose talent was obvious immediately.
“He did our «Murder by the Book», which is on all the time now. We taught him a lot about structure, but he's a very talented man. He's an original.”
Levinson and Link directed Death Lends a Hand themselves and meant to open the season with it. After watching the footage shot by a 24-year-old Spielberg, they swapped the order against their own interest — and Murder by the Book went first.
“Levinson and Link said: this is better than our episode, let's flip it and make the Steven Spielberg episode the premiere.”
Spielberg was twenty-four and simply a Universal contract director. His co-star remembers him with no awe at all — which is exactly what makes her account worth hearing.
“I was working with this kid when he wasn't Steven Spielberg yet. He was wonderful to work with, and he was very good — he didn't push, he didn't make anybody do things that didn't make sense to them.”
Quotes are in the speaker’s own words — from a transcript of the recording, or from the printed source. Players open at the right minute. Everything is shortened; the full version is in the source.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Jack Cassidy as Ken Franklin 3 episodes also in Publish or Perish, Now You See Him
- Bernie Kuby as Mike Tucker 2 episodes also in A Friend in Deed
- Frank Baker as Theatre Patron 2 episodes also in Prescription: Murder
- Leoda Richards as Theatre Patron 2 episodes also in A Case of Immunity
- Mark Russell as Police Sergeant 2 episodes also in Prescription: Murder
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →