Columbo

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  ixPrologue: Humble Origins and Dogged Returns  xvIntroduction: Murder by the Book  11. Mapping the Detective: Falk’s Early Drives  242. Best-Selling Mystery Team: Columbo and Televisual Collaboration  383. “I’m Fascinated by Money”: Rank, File, and Gumshoe Detection  724. Special Guest Stars: Hollywood Icons and Repeat Offenders  955. Between Columbo and Cassavetes: A Familial Pack  1196. “An Obsessive Preoccupation with Gadgetry”: Columbo’s Investigation of Media Technologies  1447. Columbo’s Reign: Of Life and Death and Detection  172Epilogue: Loving and Leaving Columbo  197Notes  201Bibliography  219Index  225

“Amelie Hastie makes a compelling case for revisiting a series that had a global footprint in its heyday and continues to be a staple in rerun syndication. Hastie uses Columbo’s famous tagline ‘Just one more thing’ to think about the series-and by extension television as cultural form-in relation to a complex intertextual network of quotation, iteration, and intertexts. Columbo is an exciting book by a wonderful critic, historian, and writer.” - Lynn Spigel, author of (TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life) “In Columbo, Amelie Hastie offers a comprehensive look at this essential popular television show, explaining its iconic status in the landscape of American popular culture along with the iconic status of its lead actor, Peter Falk. Hastie provides extensive information about the production history of the series as well as an analysis of specific motifs and narratives. Columbo will stand as the go-to work for study of the series.” - Dana Polan, Martin Scorsese Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University