Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
This collection gathers Columbo’s final fourteen specials rather than one continuous annual run. At a university, Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman kill their professor with a remote-controlled gun while sitting in Columbo’s guest lecture. He catches them by inviting them to plant evidence in a car that actually belongs to his wife. Other investigations involve a television presenter poisoning a blackmailer’s cigarettes, a lawyer concealing his lover’s murder, and a lottery winner whose uncle kills him to steal the prize.
The cases also move beyond the usual confrontation with a known murderer. In No Time to Die, Columbo helps search for his nephew’s kidnapped bride; Undercover has him assembling fragments of a photograph leading to stolen bank money. Elsewhere, a crime-scene investigator plants forensic evidence against his lover’s husband in A Trace of Murder. Ashes to Ashes turns on a distinctive piece of wartime shrapnel surviving cremation, linking a missing gossip reporter to an undertaker’s disposal of his body.
The last investigation, Columbo Likes the Nightlife, begins with the supposed suicide of photojournalist Linwood Coben. Nightclub promoter Justin Price killed him after Coben photographed Justin and Vanessa covering up the death of her former husband, Tony Galper. The missing photographs and Justin’s delayed response to an emergency pager call help connect the cases. At Justin’s new club, Columbo notices that one decorative fish tank is unusually shallow and holds fewer fish. A scan reveals Galper’s body concealed beneath it, and police arrest Justin and Vanessa.