This book presents an analysis of Lieutenant Columbo’s investigative method of rhetorical inquiry as seen in the television police procedural Columbo (1968-2003). With a barrage of questions about minute details and feigned ignorance, the iconic detective enacts a persona of ‘antipotency’ (counter authoritativeness) to affect the villains’ underestimation of his attention to inconsistencies, abductive reasoning, and rhetorical efficacy. In a predominantly dialogue-based investigation, Columbo exhausts his suspects by asking a battery of questions concerning all minor details of the case, which evolves into an aggravating tedious provocation for the killer trying to maintain innocence. Based on the Ancient Greek ideal of Sophrosyne (temperance, restraint) and the Socratic method of questioning to discover truths, the Lieutenant models effective rhetorical inquiry with resistant responders: shy, secretive, anxious, emotionally-disconnected, angry, arrogant, jealous, and, in this case, murderous conversants. While designed to be critical and theoretical, this text strives to be accessible to interdisciplinary readers, practical in application, and amusing for Columbo buffs.
Table of Content
PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING THE LIEUTENANT AND HIS VILLAINS
Introduction: Introduction to Columbo And Columbo
Columbo, An Inverted Mystery
A Snapshot of Television and Film History: Pre-Columbo
The Underestimated Detective (1910)
Scholarship and the Lieutenant
Historical, Literary, and Television Contexts: Shift to Grit and Realism
Columbo and the Lieutenant: Literary Influences
The Firsts in Short and Long Detective Fiction in English (1841-62)
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Lieutenant Porfiry Petrovitch: Pretenses (1886)
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: Genius Detective (1887)
British Golden Age, Drawing Room Mysteries, The Cozy (1920-40)
Characterology and Character-Based Detective TV Shows
The Lieutenant with His Sergeants
Columbo: A Blend of Genres, Influences, and Deviations
Columbo, The Suspect Charmer
Suspects as Resistant Responders
Charming the Stinging Villains
Glamour in Columbo
Two Sides of Columbo Presented on a Case by Case Basis
Columbo Talks to ‘Dog’, ‘Étude in Black’ (1972)
Columbo and a Resistant Responder, ‘Double Shock’ (1973)
Dual Personae, ‘An Exercise in Fatality’ (1974)
Columbo and the Ancient Greek Virtue of Sophrosyne
Looking for the Right Word: Antipotency
The Columbo Killer
White, middle-aged, wealthy, intelligent, cultured, successful, arrogant
Audience-Villain Relationships and Columbo
Columbo’s Five Types of Villains
Columbo, Women of His Investigations, and the Equal Rights Movement
The Women’s Professional Movement Strategic Male Chauvinism
Columbo’s Female Villains: Ladylike but Lethal
Columbo and the Female Accomplices
Columbo and the Female Witnesses
PART TWO: COLUMBO’S METHOD OF INVESTIGATION
Crime Scene Examination and Ratiocination
What Viewers Know and Don’t Know about What Columbo Knows
The Working Cop’s Habit of Asking Questions: A Rhetoric of Inquiry
Power of Asking Different Types of Questions
The Socratic Method of Dialectic, aporia, and Standard Elenchus
Techniques of Columbo’s Rhetorical Inquiry
Fake Questions Types with Multiple Functions
Probing Questions Types with Multiple Functions
Killing Them Softly: Irritating the Suspects in Seven Modes
Obligating the Suspect with Appeasement Pressure and the Extrication of Any Threat
False modesty, Excessive flattery
Repeated, Disingenuous Apologies
Wasting the Suspect’s Time
Circumstantial Speech and Inane Storytelling
False Exits, ‘Oh, I almost forgot’
False Exits, ‘Just one more thing’
Special Cases of Direct Confrontation: Columbo Gets Mad
Columbo Closes the Case: Capture and Consequences
Lieutenant Columbo: Virtuous or Villainous?
Columbo: The Denouement PART THREE: COLUMBO’S LEGACY IN POPULAR CULTURE AND ACADEMIA
Television Detectives Influenced by Lieutenant Columbo
Spoofing the Lieutenant
Using Columbo’s Method in Our Everyday Lives
‘Just One More Thing’: Columbo and Spectatorship
About the author
Christyne Berzsenyi is associate professor of English at Penn State Wilkes-Barre.
