Afoot Glenn Fleishman

There’s something fishy about the murder in this episode. Novelist W. M. Akers joins us to talk about Murder Under Glass, an episode from the final season of the original NBC run of Columbo featuring Louis Jourdan as a food critic and, of course, a murderer. It is maybe not the most perfect episode, but well worth a visit for the variations on the formula—people are actually happy to see the good Lieutenant for once, and he gets to show off some serious culinary skills. We also get to talking about Will’s own mystery novels. Somehow, we wind up talking...

As podcasters and fans of podcasts—as well as good murder mysteries—we’ve convened a panel to talk about Only Murders in the Building, the new Hulu series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman. Yes, there are spoilers, so go watch the series first, trust us. Then come back and listen to us talk about murders, cats, sex toys, animations, El Paso, generation gaps, and dips. As you do. And remember, he’s 76 years old! That takes the slapstick in a whole new direction....

Yes, it’s April 1, but this isn’t a joke, Afoot is back from the grave as it were. And that question doesn’t refer to Glenn—or does it?—but to Lt. Columbo, one of the rare television characters to become as iconic as Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple, et al, and almost instantly from his first appearance. Or, well, Peter Falk’s first appearance. Because he wasn’t the first actor to portray the good lieutenant… The UCLA Film and TV Archive presented a special stream of an episode of The Chevy Mystery Show, a 13 episode summer replacement series from 1960. The title? Enough...

We’ve all started reading down mystery series or authors, and then hit a point where we said, “nah, I’m good.” In this episode, we talk about what we gave up on and why, and some we loved all throughout. This comes from a place of love: we enjoyed early installments enough that we kept reading, but something eventually got lost for us. In fact, we often recommend the first few or even several novels, and tell you when the best point to stop is — the subtitle of this episode is “exactly when to stop reading.” An important note: this episode...

Forty years ago, Neil Simon wrote a pair of parodies in the mystery vein: the 1976 film Murder By Death, which sent up the great movie detectives, and The Cheap Detective in 1978, which took on hard-boiled Bogart characters, like Sam Spade. The two films have a lot in common, including Robert Moore as director, Peter Falk as the Bogie analog, and Madeline Kahn in a wonderful supporting role in each. But the Afoot panel prefers one to the other. Which one? You’ll have to listen to find out. We have spoiler-free parts of this podcast for each film, so...

The original rumpled detective, Columbo, broke the mold of the urbane cogitator or hardboiled world-weary dick who merely needed to assemble all the clues — and keep from being killed. Nearly every episode of the long-running TV character (across two series and 69 episodes) showed viewers the murder at its start. Columbo, a police detective, is brought in on the case, and we see the killer becoming increasingly agitated as he relentlessly circles his prey. We talk about episodes and actors, and why Falk created an enduring character....