Plot

An egotistical but successful star of a TV detective show murders his blackmailing producer, and makes it look like a stickup robbery. Lt. Columbo dismantles his seemingly solid alibi.

Ward Fowler is an actor on a TV program, and his character is Detective Lucerne. His producer is Claire Daley, once his lover and now his blackmailer. Fowler decides to kill Claire and to do in such a way as to frame her husband. Lt. Columbo begins to investigate and he is helped by Detective Lucerne who, at a certain moment, suspects the actor Fowler.—Baldinotto da Pistoia

Ward Fowler, star of the popular Detective Lucerne TV series, decides to kill producer Claire Daley, his blackmailing former lover, further throwing suspicion on her business partner/husband Sid. As Lt. Columbo begins to investigate, he finds himself helped by the self-absorbed actor vacillating between being actor Ward Fowler and his character Detective Lucerne.—statmanjeff

Egocentric but talented actor Ward Fowler has a TV series called Detective Lucerne, but he also has a few skeletons in his closet, and his former lover/producer Clare Daley knows all about them. His name is not Ward Fowler; in actuality, it is Charles Kipling, a Korean War AWOL soldier. Clare has been making the film studio pay Ward a bundle of money, so she can blackmail him for a large portion of his earnings. Tired of her bleeding him, Ward murders Clare and tries to make it look like a botched robbery, pointing to her husband as the culprit. Our dogged detective Lt. Columbo is not convinced about the botched robbery theory and immediately zeros in on Ward as his prime suspect.—charmardee-smith