Lieutenant Colombo – the last hero of the classical detective story

Abstract

The article considers most of the films in the Columbo cycle as the classical detective story. Columbo has all the necessary features of the classical sleuth: aptitude for acting, grotesqueness, trickery, breach of the norm. His appearance is close to mask that is why his attributes (a cigar and a raincoat) are so important. Unlike the classical sleuths in literature Columbo works for the police but contrasts against his normal colleagues as a wrong policeman. Depiction of the crime precedes investigation is characteristic not of the literary classical detective story, but of a number of works by R. Austin Freeman, who introduced the concept of the inverted detective story. But in these works there is no detective pointe, required for the classical detective story. In the Columbo cycle the pointe is associated not with the announcement of the name of the criminal, as in literature, but with the way he is unmasked.