by Deborah Shapiro
AVAILABLE SOON (THIS BOOK PUBLISHES ON 11/18/25)
The situation: A woman in Chicago dives deep into a bottomless well of streaming options and finds herself methodically screening old episodes of Columbo. Soon Peter Falk becomes a constant presence, a shadow of sorts, turning up everywhere in his famous raincoat, scratching his eyebrows and apologizing for his cigar. Dusky blue sedans, landline phones, wall-to-wall carpet, and the Los Angeles of the previous century create a revealing alternate context for her life in this one. Mixing memoir and cultural criticism, Watching the Detective offers a close reading of the classic television series through a personal lens.
From beginning to end, this book is an investigation, seeking to understand the comforts to be found not in mere nostalgia but in exploring new connections, finding new ways of seeing. Reckoning with the vagaries of memory, the passage of time, and the sometimes mysterious bond between fathers and daughters, Watching the Detective—like the series itself—is a bit of a brain teaser. Both highly subjective and utterly universal, at turns slyly funny and unexpectedly moving, it’s also completely unforgettable. Like the lieutenant himself, once this book has got you, it never quite lets go.
Praise for Watching the Detective
“Like Nicholson Baker’s U and I or Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, Shapiro has written a tender, funny, and supersmart memoir masquerading as a treatise on an artist—in this case, the fantastically avuncular Peter Falk. Shapiro’s deeply informed yet enjoyably roving approach mirrors that of the glass-eyed, perpetually raincoated gumshoe. She shows how our pop-culture obsessions, far from frivolous, track onto our actual lives, providing clues and maps to memory and desire ... Just one more thing: I loved it!”
—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams
“A spellbinding dive into the mysterious and enduring pull of Columbo, Watching the Detective turns the tables and investigates the man himself. Rewatching every episode, piecing together clues, Deborah Shapiro explores the now-lost world of 1970s LA, lets us see the props, the paint on the cars (and yes, the wardrobe), all to summon the ghosts of a shared past that, under her gaze, almost acquires the texture of myth. The book is a moving meditation on the haunting power of moving images. Part memoir, part time capsule, it defies categorization in the best possible way.”
—Camille Bordas, author of The Material
“Watching the Detective takes one of the modest comforts of 20th-century life—Peter Falk’s irresistibly tender television gumshoe—and uses it as a prism through which to strain the nightmares of the 21st. The result is a book that seems, somehow, fathomless, glowing with insight and uncanny intelligence. Like Columbo itself, I wished simply that it might never end.”
—Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood
Book details:
Paperback
Dimensions: 5 x 8 in
Publication date: November 18, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-218-75765-6
120 pages