What Peter Falk thinks might be a quick one though the case piques his curiosity turns out to be long and complex when Ed Begley, Jr. comes into his office. The case involved a break in of one criminal breaking into the room of another and each killing the other. The one breaking in has a carefully cut out piece of a photograph.
Begley who plays one Irving Krutch and who always refers to himself in the third person is an insurance investigator who has another piece and wants Columbo and his partner Harrison Page to look into this jigsaw puzzle like photograph which shows the location of stolen bank loot from a robbery several years earlier.
The usual Columbo formula departs radically as the man himself goes undercover and without the usual rumpled raincoat. It nearly gets him killed which sets up a very funny scene when a nurse won't let him out of the hospital.
In the meantime two other murders occur of piece holders, eight pieces in all. Breaking an alibi witness is at the climax of this story.
Burt Young is one of the piece holders and later a victim. Peter Falk goes undercover to smoke him out among others. Watch Falk assume a different guise to relate to Young on his level.
All in all a fine episode.
Begley who plays one Irving Krutch and who always refers to himself in the third person is an insurance investigator who has another piece and wants Columbo and his partner Harrison Page to look into this jigsaw puzzle like photograph which shows the location of stolen bank loot from a robbery several years earlier.
The usual Columbo formula departs radically as the man himself goes undercover and without the usual rumpled raincoat. It nearly gets him killed which sets up a very funny scene when a nurse won't let him out of the hospital.
In the meantime two other murders occur of piece holders, eight pieces in all. Breaking an alibi witness is at the climax of this story.
Burt Young is one of the piece holders and later a victim. Peter Falk goes undercover to smoke him out among others. Watch Falk assume a different guise to relate to Young on his level.
All in all a fine episode.