For decades, generations of television fans have been enraptured by Lt. Columbo, played by Peter Falk, as he unravels clues to catch killers who believe they are above the law. In her investigation of the 1970s series cocreated by Richard Levinson and William Link, Amelie Hastie explores television history through an emphasis on issues of stardom, authorship, and its interconnections with classical and New Hollywood cinema. Through close textual analysis, attentive to issues of class relations and connections to other work by Falk as well as Levinson and Link, Columbo: Make Me a Perfect Murder sees American television as an intertextual system, from its origins as a commercial broadcast medium to its iterations within contemporary streaming platforms. Ultimately, Hastie argues, in the titular detective’s constant state of learning about cultural trends and media forms, Columbo offers viewers the opportunity to learn with him and, through his tutelage, to become detectives of television itself.

Amelie Hastie is Nancy and Douglas D. Abbey ’71 Professor of Film and Media Studies and English at Amherst College and author of Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection, and Film History, also published by Duke University Press.

Acknowledgments  ix
Prologue: Humble Origins and Dogged Returns  xv
Introduction: Murder by the Book  1
1. Mapping the Detective: Falk’s Early Drives  24
2. Best-Selling Mystery Team: Columbo and Televisual Collaboration  38
3. “I’m Fascinated by Money”: Rank, File, and Gumshoe Detection  72
4. Special Guest Stars: Hollywood Icons and Repeat Offenders  95
5. Between Columbo and Cassavetes: A Familial Pack  119
6. “An Obsessive Preoccupation with Gadgetry”: Columbo’s Investigation of Media Technologies  144
7. Columbo’s Reign: Of Life and Death and Detection  172
Epilogue: Loving and Leaving Columbo  197
Notes  201
Bibliography  219
Index  225