From Publishers Weekly
The second hard-copy appearance of TV's scruffy Lieutenant Columbo is a wickedly successful mystery that's based on a Manson Family copycat killing and includes Charles Manson wannabes and a few of his aging followers. Twenty-five years after the infamous 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders (Columbo was the third homicide detective on the scene), millionaire retailer Yussef Khoury and his mistress surreptitiously enter the elegant Khoury home on Mulholland Drive. Sometime later, an anonymous phone call sends the police, including Columbo, to the house where Yussef's wife, Arlene; her lover, a thieving production designer for Khoury's film company; and the houseboy lie dead of multiple stab wounds, with the words Healter Skelter and All Piggys Die written in blood on the wall. Yussef, arriving after the cops, implicates his wife's secretary, Puss Dogwood, who was once a teenage member of Manson's family. Pitted against suave and wealthy villains, the rumpled Columbo bumbles his way straight through the film industry, posh retail trade, scuba-diving clubs and Manson Family lore to keep readers enthralled. With solid plotting, fully fleshed-out characters and dry humor, Harrington's series, begun with Columbo: The Grassy Knoll , is prime-time entertainment.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Yussef "Joe" Khoury, owner of a posh Southern California department store, has become a movie producer. He's in love with Kimberly Dana, who will star in his next film, if it gets made--there's a bit of a problem with Khoury's wife, Arlene, who wants a divorce. When Arlene and her lover are brutally murdered, the police find graffiti written in the victims' blood, recalling the Manson killings 25 years earlier. And one of Manson's former disciples works in Khoury's office. It's all a little too pat for Lieutenant Columbo, of the popular TV show. Wrapped in his rumpled raincoat and gnawing on his omnipresent cigar, he picks apart the case against the prime suspect while zeroing in on Khoury and his movie-star lover. We know who, what, when, how, and why from the start. The fun is watching Columbo--polite, oblique and seemingly distracted--disassemble the "perfect" crime while playing cat and mouse with his suspects. If readers like the TV show, they'll enjoy the capably written book, which is full of sly digs at the posh L.A. scene. Those who like their killers revealed on the last page had best stay away.
Wes Lukowsky
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
