{
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    "language": "en-US",
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  "title": "Beyond Columbo : The Life and Times of Peter Falk",
  "subtitle": null,
  "slug": "beyond-columbo-the-life-and-times-of-peter-falk",
  "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/william-birnes/beyond-columbo-the-life-and-times-of-peter-falk",
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  "markdown": "https://www.bookquiver.com/william-birnes/beyond-columbo-the-life-and-times-of-peter-falk.md",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "William Birnes",
      "slug": "william-birnes",
      "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/william-birnes"
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  "language": "en_US",
  "original_title": null,
  "original_language": null,
  "first_published": "2017-07-19",
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  "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/independently-published/william-birnes/beyond-columbo-the-life-and-times-of-peter-falk_978-15-2188-149-1-51637f7b.webp?v=2026-11-12%2013%3A15%3A57",
  "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",
  "editions": [
    {
      "title": "Beyond Columbo : The Life and Times of Peter Falk",
      "subtitle": null,
      "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/william-birnes/beyond-columbo-the-life-and-times-of-peter-falk/9781521881491",
      "publisher": "Independently published",
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      "translators": [],
      "medium": "paper",
      "duration_seconds": null,
      "narrators": [],
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      "isbn": "978-15-2188-149-1",
      "pages": 422,
      "published": "2017-07-19",
      "language": "en_US",
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/independently-published/william-birnes/beyond-columbo-the-life-and-times-of-peter-falk_978-15-2188-149-1-51637f7b.webp?v=2026-11-12%2013%3A15%3A57"
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}