Customer Reviews

Columbo : The Game Show Killer

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those of you who have watched the Columbo show for many years, you will be sorely disappointed by this book, as well as the entire Columbo series. The brilliance of the old show was the subtlety in which Columbo got things done. Here, all the subtlety is pushed to the front as the reader can barely go 5 pages without a reference to Mrs. Columbo. There is no panache in which the murder is solved. No, hard-hitting Columbo. Just boring, diffuse, loose ends, that when they come together, you wish you would have sat down and watched on of the episodes that you've already seen 20 times.

I am a big fan of Lieutenant Columbo. I loved the TV shows and this is the fourth book I have read in the series by William Harrington. It is not the best. The plot is complex and not very believable. A famous defense attorney made up a story to convince a former game show star to commit a murder so he could get her acquitted and they could both make millions on books, movie rights, and TV appearances. He told her that her teenage daughter, who had been murdered many years earlier, was killed by the girl's father, an aging superstar. In her anger, she agreed to the plan and killed the actor. Lieutenant Columbo was able to arrest her quickly but figuring out the lawyer's role was more difficult. I was never convinced that a brilliant attorney would concoct such a harebrained scheme or that another person would actually go along with it. I also felt that the character of Lieutenant Columbo was not as well developed as in the earlier books and his speech patterns won't ring true to anyone who knows him from TV. So why give the book four stars? Because I couldn't put it down. It's got a lot of faults but it's still a good read.