Wednesday, June 02, 2010

The Columbo Collection -- William Link

If you enjoyed the Columbo TV series, or even if you didn't, you might enjoy this Crippen & Landru collection of original stories by William Link, one of its creators.

You probably know that Crippen & Landru publishes great reprints, but this collection isn't a reprint. As I said above, it's all original. These stories weren't done as part of the TV series, and they've never appeared in print before.

And take a look at the cover. It's by Al Hirschfield, and I'm sure you can find his daughter's name hidden in it. But can you find the hidden gallows and noose? I'm looking for it, myself.

This just arrived at Casa de Crider, but I'm looking forward to reading some of these inverted detective stories and seeing how Columbo figures things out.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny - I just finished the book this morning. I was not much of a Columbo fan - way too samey - even though I am a big Peter Falk fan. But reading these one a day I did enjoy the book more than I expected to.

Link wrote some of the best TV mysteries ever (with his late partner Richard Levinson).

Jeff

Richard Robinson said...

I got this one a few weeks ago, but after reading the introduction and the first two stories, set it aside until I finished a few other things that I'd already started - always attempting to finish one thing before starting another, usually unsuccessfully. What I read of ti was greta, and I'm eager to get back to it!

Glen Davis said...

I read the novelizations back in he 90s, which all got too involved with unsolved murders in the past. Still might pik this one up.

Scott Cupp said...

The noose is hanging off the top of the L in Columbo

mybillcrider said...

Where's my magnifying glass?

Scott Cupp said...

I looked at the cover over on Amazon, enlarged it and hit the zoom to find the noose.

mybillcrider said...

Well, I have the book right here, so the magnifying glass should do the trick. We'll see.

Doug Greene said...

Nooses or gallows are hidden in all our covers, but for obvious reasons we weren't going to alter Hirschfield's great caricature -- so we snuck (sneaked?)it into the "L" in Columbo. Squint and you can see it.

mybillcrider said...

Mighty sneaky, Doug!