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Publish or Perish
Russian title: Роман без окончания · Russian version
A publisher murders his star author and frames a dead man for it, in a plan so layered that it needs two corpses and a fake confession. Jack Cassidy's second Columbo villain, and his most elaborate.
Editor’s rating — 8.5 out of 10.
- Number
- 22 of 69
- Aired
- January 18, 1974
- Running time
- 71 min
- Director
- Robert Butler
- Writer
- Peter S. Fischer
- Music
- Billy Goldenberg
The case
- The killer
- Jack Cassidy as Riley Greenleaf and John Chandler as Eddie Kane
- The victim
- Mickey Spillane as Alan Mallory and John Chandler as Eddie Kane
- Guest cast
- Jack Cassidy, Gregory Sierra, Mickey Spillane, Mariette Hartley, Jacques Aubuchon, John Davis Chandler
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
Riley Greenleaf publishes books and is about to lose the only author who sells them: Alan Mallory, whose contract is up and who is leaving for a rival. Greenleaf takes out a large insurance policy on his writer and then sets about collecting on it.
The plan requires a scapegoat, and Greenleaf builds one. Eddie Kane, an unstable explosives expert with a grudge, is manoeuvred into looking like a man planning a murder — right down to a manuscript full of incriminating notes. Greenleaf kills Mallory, arranges the evidence around Kane, and then kills Kane too, staging it as the suicide of a guilty man.
The final layer is the alibi: Greenleaf spends the evening of the murder making himself conspicuously, memorably drunk in public, so that a dozen witnesses will swear he could not have driven anywhere.
Riley Greenleaf publishes books and is about to lose the only author who sells any. Alan Mallory's contract is up and he is leaving for a rival, which for Greenleaf means the end of the business.
The plan requires a scapegoat, and Greenleaf builds one from scratch. Eddie Kane — unstable, explosives-trained, carrying a grudge — is manoeuvred into looking like a man preparing a murder, complete with a manuscript full of incriminating notes.
Greenleaf kills Mallory, arranges the evidence around Kane, then kills Kane as well and stages it as the suicide of a guilty man. The insurance policy on his author, taken out shortly before, completes the arithmetic.
How Columbo gets him
Cassidy plays Greenleaf as a man permanently amused by his own performance, and the drunk act is the film's best joke — Columbo watches it with the polite patience of someone who has seen a great deal of genuine drunkenness and can tell the difference.
The trouble with a frame that thorough is that it is too complete. Kane's guilt is documented from every angle, which is not how guilt usually presents itself. The lieutenant keeps asking why a man planning a murder would write so much of it down.
The insurance policy is the other loose thread. It is recent, it is large, and it was taken out by a publisher on an author who was leaving him — a fact Greenleaf explains smoothly and repeatedly, which is itself a kind of answer.
Cassidy plays Greenleaf as permanently amused by his own performance, and the drunk act — an evening of conspicuous, memorable intoxication to cover the murder — is the film's best joke. Columbo watches it with the patience of a man who has seen a great deal of real drunkenness.
The trouble with a frame that thorough is that it is too complete. Kane's guilt is documented from every angle, which is not how guilt usually presents itself.
The manuscript closes it. The incriminating pages were typed on a machine Kane never had access to, and edited by somebody who could not resist improving the sentences.
Worth knowing
- Cassidy's three Columbo murderers — Ken Franklin, Riley Greenleaf and Elliot Markham's rival in Now You See Him — are all men in the business of manufacturing other people's images.
- Mickey Spillane appears as the murdered author, a piece of casting the episode plays completely straight.
- Directed by Robert Butler, who also made the pilot of Hill Street Blues.
- Mickey Spillane plays the murdered author, a piece of casting the episode plays entirely straight.
- Directed by Robert Butler, who later made the pilot of Hill Street Blues.
- Broadcast in January 1974; Cassidy's second of three Columbo murderers.
Verdict
A busy, over-engineered plot rescued by Cassidy, who is more fun to watch than the machinery he is operating. Two murders and a frame is a lot to fit in ninety minutes, and it shows.
The drunk scene alone justifies the episode: it is a performance within a performance, and Falk plays the receiving end perfectly.
An over-engineered plot rescued by its star. Two murders and a full frame-up is a great deal to fit into ninety minutes, and the seams show.
The drunk scene alone justifies it: a performance inside a performance, with Falk playing the perfect straight man.
What the people who made it said
Why the Falk–Cassidy pairing worked better than any other, the director puts simply: two textures that refuse to mix. Silver hair, a beard, a trained voice — against a rumpled raincoat and a street accent.
“You put those two elements together and it's just great — oil and water. Somebody's going to win. Guess who.”
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 Riley Greenleaf 3 episodes also in Murder by the Book, Now You See Him
- Alan Fudge as David Chase 3 episodes also in Columbo Goes to the Guillotine, Columbo Goes to College
- Mariette Hartley as Eileen McRae 2 episodes also in Try and Catch Me
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →