{ "item_title" : "Beyond Columbo", "item_author" : [" William J. Birnes", "Richard A. Lertzman "], "item_description" : "We knew him as Lieutenant Columbo, showing up at a crime scene behind the wheel of an iconic Peugeot 403 convertible and wearing a rumpled trench coat, tie often at half mast from an open collar, and smoking a cigar. He was meticulous, though, in his search for clues, focusing on things that didn't add up and homing in on a person whom he suspected as he tightened the web around his prey until, in a final reveal, he got the suspect to cough up a confession.This was Peter Falk, who inhabited the role of Lieutenant Columbo after a successful career playing gangsters in feature films opposite the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Glen Ford. And the new biography of Peter Falk, *Beyond Columbo, * is an in-depth look at the actor's life, his place in history, and his artist's life.Authors Richard Lertzman and Bill Birnes (*Dr. Feelgood* and *The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney)* cover not just the details of Falk's life and the influences upon him, they talk about his range as a performer who could inhabit roles as tough as gangster Abe Reles in *Murder, Inc., * slapstick comedy in *It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World* and *The Great Race, * and as benevolent as the kindly grandfather in *Princess Bride.* The authors reveal that there was much more to the real-life Peter Falk than the characters he played. Falk tried to join the Marines, applied to be an agent for the CIA, sailed as a cook in the Merchant Marine, worked for Marshal Tito in Communist Yugoslavia, got himself arrested in Italy over a restaurant bill, and was followed around by Soviet intelligence agents.The authors delve into the basic psychological conflict that drove Falk from the time he grew up in a well-to-do merchant family in Ossining, New York, where his father wanted him to get a steady job at a steady income instead of painting his face and making a spectacle of himself. This drove Falk, listening to the inner voices of his parents to question himself often, even as he tried to live the life of a vagabond performer looking for the perfect role, the role he ultimately found in *Columbo.*The book includes in-depth and exclusive interview with many of Falk's co-stars, Joe Mantegna, Dabney Coleman, Paul Reiser, George Segal, Kevin Pollak, Dan Lauria, Steven Bochco, and Ed Begley, Jr., as well as from *Columbo's* first director, Steven Spielber", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/52/188/149/1521881499_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "24.99", "online_price" : "24.99", "our_price" : "24.99", "club_price" : "24.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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