When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.
The kidnapping of a woman who is married to a wealthy astrologer -- and the appearance of her kidnapper, who claims she is being held in a room with a ticking time bomb -- spur the woman's husband to bash in the kidnapper's head with a vase, leaving McCloud, Clifford and Broadhurst with a limited time to determine where the woman is and who is really behind the kidnapping.
Moving into their new home, Sally discovers a dead body inside one of the barrels but when Mac and the police arrive both barrel and body are gone.
Columbo matches is skills against Brimmer, a former cop turned private investigator with a quick temper who tries to blackmail a client's wife, when she refuses he accidentally kills her and it's up to Columbo to nail him.
Saturday brunch with Sally's mother leads to trouble when a neighbor reports that her pedigreed Pekinese has been kidnapped--along with her husband.
A war hero shoots and kills his business partner; an easily manipulated young divorcée is the only witness.
A large Ohio country boy arrives in The Big Apple to collect on a $10,000 debt for services rendered to a New York mobster, who couldn't be less happy about the publicity the visitor (and his elderly mom) are stirring up. Stefanie Powers plays a "model" working both the mobster and the visitor.
McMillan's investigation of a suspicious burglary finds him crossing paths (and swords) with a number of his and Sally's friends. Mac, Sally and Sgt. Enright go undercover to a costume ball, where Mac is confident the culprit will strike.
A wealthy art collector is murdered, and all signs point to a robbery gone wrong. But the nephew's alibi is a little too convenient, and Columbo pulls a fast one to ferret out the killer.
When a business magnate already hiding out from his partners narrowly escapes death by bombing (killing an aide who visited his lakeside hideaway), he tries to communicate to his girlfriend that he's still alive -- prompting the associates to try to drive her insane and incompetent to find him via various scare tactics, and take over the company for themselves.
The McMillans befriend Billy Benton, quarterback for the Hawks, who is either innocent or involved in a plot to throw the game. A $75,000 bet was made against the Hawks, and the bettor intends to collect at any cost, even murder.
A mousy heiress murders her brother, pretending she thought he was a burglar. Lt. Columbo unravels her alibi.
A tip-off from an informant and help from a retired hit man clue McCloud in to the existence of a hit man famed for leaving no traces of his crime, and reveal the nature of his target -- an honest businessman with an extreme talent for abrading everyone in his path.
Mac's ex-pug pal Freddie O'Neale becomes a target for murder after he claims he can identify The Dutchman, a notorious jewel thief whose face is unknown to the police and to the posh San Francisco social set whose treasures he plunders.
A very successful mortician has a sideline robbing legitimate drug shipments--he waters them down and puts them in caskets destined for South America. Usually, his two squabbling associates carry out the robberies, but this time he's convinced by his wife to include her dull-witted brother, who goes on a daylight heist and murders a security guard. The associates kidnap McCloud at the Statue of Liberty and hold him for ransom in exchange for the brother.
Pressured to give up his birthright, a chemical company heir enacts a clever plan to get rid of his blackmailing uncle and take over the family business. But Lt. Columbo suspects the man's death was not just a tragic accident.
A former student (Rick Weaver in the first of five annual appearances) is accused of the fatal stabbing of his ex-violin teacher, but the murder was actually a hit -- a "reformed" mobster and his lawyer, ambitious for political office, are trying to smoke out the violinist's identical twin brother, a thug with almost no redeeming qualities, to waste him before he goes honest and spills the beans about other crimes.
Elliot Markham, a brilliant architect and con-man, murders a Texas millionaire and hides his body in order to keep his visionary construction project financed.
It's Sally's birthday, but she and Mac are in no mood to celebrate as someone has broken into their house and stolen all the sharp objects (knives, scissors, razor blades and even Sally's knitting needles). Making things worse is that a serial killer known as the Asylum Killer is on the loose and he has written a letter promising a double murder for his next crime. The couple make the best of it despite their fears and try to celebrate. However, after drinking drugged champagne they are knocked unconscious and awake to find their house covered with a fumigation tent ...
When a police patrol officer is killed in a grenade ambush, McCloud finds out the cop was using blackmail -- including a Broadway theatrical producer to advance the career of his daughter.
Numerous bits of evidence indicate McMillan's former girlfriend shot and killed her husband, but the commissioner wants all of the facts before an arrest is made.
A ruthless conductor murders the gifted pianist with whom he is having an affair. Lt. Columbo is on the case.
A séance is attended by the ghost of a woman's dead husband. The woman is a friend of the McMillans, and they they leap into action to rescue her sanity and her life.
When McCloud, on stakeout at a grocery store, spots a suspect in a three-year-old Taos bank robbery-bombing and arrests him, the thief's accomplices pull every trick in the book to spring or kill the robber.
An aging lawman in 1901 Oklahoma employs the latest crime detection techniques to solve the murder of a homesteading couple while overcoming the skepticism of his young, college-educated police chief.
Columbo arrives at a kidnapping case, which at some point turns to worse. Everything seems to be related to a trust fund managed by a man with a great love for orchids.
A composer/pianist whose latest work is dedicated to Sally is stabbed in his apartment which contains items that point to a relationship with her, although she had not met him previously.
Legendary outlaw Wes Durham is being held in the New Prospect jail, awaiting a new form of execution: electric chair. Hec's job is to uncover and capture an admirer of the outlaw, who is killing a person each day until Durham is set free.
The manager of a football team murders its callow owner, making it look as if the young man had had an accident in his swimming pool. Lt. Columbo is on the case.
Sergeant Enright's abusive ex-wife is shot while locked in a room alone with him, and the bullet that kills her came from his gun--a weapon he was holding at the time of the shooting.
In London, a respected Shakespearean acting duo cover up the unintended killing of their producer.
Flight attendants on the European beat assemble a jewelry collection by stealing it piecemeal, and murdering anyone who stands in their way.
The mob doesn't want a man named Benson to testify. To prevent this, they kidnap Mac and replace him with a shady lookalike to impersonate him.
Hec sets out to uncover the killers of a family of settlers. Their arrow-pierced bodies and a brave's medicine sack containing a green feather implicate the Indians, but Hec is reluctant to rush to judgment.
McCloud and an undercover policewoman infiltrate a huge ring of car thieves and chop shops.
McCloud befriends a model who's being used as a pawn in a drug-smuggling ring in which mules leave drugs inside planes to be picked up by the cleaning crew.
Sally is the victim of a purse-snatcher. But when her purse is returned, and the thief is found dead, Mac realizes Sally has a secret admirer with a deadly obsession.
A faded movie actress commits murder. Lt. Columbo, one of her biggest fans, is on the case.
Hec pursues a check forger to Santa Rita, New Mexico, where Hec meets and rekindles an old flame. Hec plays attorney to free a friend being framed for murder, which puts him afoul of Henry T. Madden, a tyrant who holds the town in fear.
A deadly game of Button Button Who's Got the Button, centered around a priceless statuette coveted by a murderous thief, a crooked cop, various operators and an 8-year-old pickpocket.
A surgeon has an ingenious plan for murdering his partner in a research project, but a nurse catches onto the scheme.
Hec quits his job and relocates to Enid, Oklahoma, where he immediately finds himself hard driven to solve a tragic double-homicide.
A chess player murders his opponent before a big match. Lt. Columbo must out-maneuver this crafty, but craven, killer.
Sally is kidnapped by an international syndicate that is after a Rembrandt painting currently on loan to the San Francisco Art Museum from the Prado.
A smarmy TV chef and his identical twin brother, a rigidly proper banker, are suspects in the electrocution of their rich uncle.
Someone seems to want Sally's Uncle Cyrus dead. Mac and Sally are in a race to find who wants him dead before it's too late.
The formula for a miracle wrinkle cream leads the founder of a cosmetics company to murder and Columbo is on this case.
On vacation in the Scottish Highlands to visit his Uncle Michael (with Sally and Mildred in tow; Enright comes over later), Mac walks onto the grounds of the McMillan castle and shouts for Uncle Michael. The response is a rifle shot. Mac rushes in and finds Uncle Michael's lawyer and his housekeeper, who are trying to break into the "keep" which Uncle Michael uses as an office. Uncle Michael is dead on the floor, shot through the head with a rifle lying beside him. All the evidence points to suicide, but Mac won't believe it -- especially when two men run away from ...
A wine connisseur kills his half- brother to prevent him selling the family winery to a merchant company so he can pay off his gambling debts.
Four elderly outlaws hold up McCloud and Broadhurst, who have just robbed a bank during a public demonstration to show the effectiveness of new bank and police procedures. As the robberies continue, and after a sophisticated computer draws the conclusion that the gang's leader is "the son of Butch Cassidy," the NYPD is sent into fits trying to track them down.
McMillian has to track down a satanic cult that has taken a deadly Interest in Sally.
Senatorial candidate Nelson Hayward murders his domineering campaign manager, staging it to appear that Hayward himself was the intended victim of a mob hit gone wrong.
A business magnate and friend of Mac's is getting mighty edgy when a car almost runs him down. Mac visits the businessman's upper-floor office, but outside the door hears glass shattering and a woman screaming out the businessman's name. Mac rushes to the broken window, looks out, and sees ... nothing. The woman, the businessman's secretary, won't talk. Mac leaves Enright in charge and goes to pick up Sally, hoping she can interview the woman. As they return to the building, they see a human body plunging down the facade of the building. This time, it really is the ...
A lawman arrives in the town of New Prospect to tell the citizens his side of the story of how he shot an outlaw about to be honored with a monument.
McCloud gets himself involved in a series of murders of high-class escorts after a body he discovers in a senator's flat mysteriously disappears.
A self-styled "motivation research specialist" uses subliminal cues to commit a murder. Lt. Columbo is on the case.
Hec sets out to take down the Detroit crime syndicate who plotted an oil driller's murder.
In the series' first two-hour episode, Mac is called back to his previous career in CIA intelligence when an agent is found fatally poisoned in a hotel room. Before dying, the agent had grabbed the Venetian blinds over his window and twisted them. Mac and the intelligence community realize the dead man was identifying his killer as "Venice," a notorious rogue agent who sells secrets anywhere and murders anyone who might recognize him. Mac and other agents seek out a woman named Elena Standish, an undercover operative who is the only person to survive a Venice attack. ...
A publisher hires a bomb enthusiast to murder a bestselling author of sex novels. Lt. Columbo is on the case.
When McCloud and Clifford wind up together at a police convention in Hawaii, Clifford is framed for murder. With the help of Clifford's ex-fiancee, several of Clifford's cop friends who are also at the convention, and a Honolulu police detective, McCloud must find out who framed him and why.
Mac's college football team has a reunion coming up, but someone plans to spoil it with a gun. The killer, using a team photo as a reference, shoots the team members in the order of the numbers on their uniforms. Mac has to try to figure out the killer's motive before his number comes up -- literally.
Hec suspects foul play when a young man dies of heart failure.
The director of a government institute that employs various scientific geniuses commits a clever murder. But another kind of genius is on the case: Lt. Columbo.
Mac's incarcerated double is "sprung" from prison in a fake breakout so that he can impersonate Mac while Mac goes undercover to break a smuggling operation.
When a shipper of contaminated stolen beef kills a USDA inspector and flees to Colorado and his employers, McCloud tracks him down, only to run smack into a dumb-but-ambitious sheriff (Claude Akins' prototype for Elroy P. Lobo) and his smart-but-wimpy deputy. Features McCloud's leap from a running horse to tackle a rustler from his dirt bike and roll down a hill punching him out.
A gospel singer wants to be rid of his zealous wife. But a murder made to look like an airplane accident does not fool the wily Lt. Columbo.
Matthias Kane comes to New Prospect looking for the father he never met. Hec befriends the hot-headed young man and assists him in locating his father, uncovering dark secrets and shady pasts in the process.
The first of four "Alamo" episodes has the 23rd Precinct (in its last appearance; the show moved to Police Headquarters the next year) under siege by mobsters desperate to locate the diary of a kept woman who knows all about football game fixing. First major role for Robby Weaver, as a phony newspaper reporter.
New Prospect hosts the first flight by two airplane inventors, but a cloud hanging over the celebrated exhibition is Hec's investigation of a mysterious murder. Doc Coogan attempts to heal a family torn asunder by alcoholism.
A police commissioner provides a false alibi for a wife killer, but then expects an alibi in return.
A health club owner murders one of his franchisees. Lt. Columbo is on the case.
A madam uses underage girls to extort credit cards from the Johns -- but even she has to ask for McCloud's help when one of the girls gives birth and is stalked by a robber-killer posing as a Minnesota sheriff.
When multi-millionaire Maxwell Abbott dies, he arranges for 5 couples to participate in a winner-take-all automobile rally using his collection of classic cars. The prize: the vintage cars themselves, valued at nearly $2 million. McMillan was an old friend of Abbott's and he's pledged the collection to the police benevolent fund if he wins. It soon becomes apparent that someone is prepared to win at all costs. Forced to use Sally's old car after someone disables the classic Corvette they were supposed to use, the McMillan's set off but not before others have found ...
A photographer murders his wife and blames her death on a bungled kidnapping. But Lt. Columbo has an even sharper eye than the Pulitzer Prize winner.
A film producer steals an idea about making a movie about a diamond-store robbery to cover the real-life robbery of said store, and kills the original screenwriter to boot.
Mac and Sally find themselves investigating a murder when their host, Ewing Webley, is murdered. Webley is a very rich man having made his fortune in the insurance industry and is survived by his son Walter and his much younger wife, Rachel. Many people had a motive for killing him. His wife may have been having an affair with tennis pro Ilia Astrov who's just had his sponsorship terminated by the now dead man; as well, the man didn't see eye to eye with his son who felt diminished by his father's success. In his will, Ewing Hubley left most of his estate to his son ...
The commandant of a military academy murders the chairman of the board, who wants to oust him. Lt. Columbo takes up residence in the barracks to expose the killer.
A black gang infiltrating a white ethnic gang's numbers racket makes four very big mistakes, in ascending order of importance: robbing and killing a pickup man for his bets and the numbers; shooting Broadhurst (knocking him out of the episode after the first scene) when he tries to interfere; framing the unconscious Broadhurst for skimming money from the numbers runners; and depriving a VERY well-connected Jewish tailor of his winnings.
In the second episode to discuss Mac's past life as a CIA operative, he's called on by his old boss to help investigate a "sleeper," a Communist agent who has lived undetected in the United States and adopted American customs until it's his -- or her -- moment to strike. An upcoming U.S.-Soviet intelligence summit is the apparent moment. The sleeper could be anybody, even Mac's intelligence buddy, because he or she is thoroughly Americanized and could be engaged in anything, including counterintelligence. Throw in several Soviet hit men assigned to waste the sleeper ...
On temporary assignment with the NYPD Mounted Police, McCloud and a nervous policewoman botch the attempt to capture a group of radicals who stole a huge cache of weapons -- so both go undercover posing as crazed gun buyers.
When a drug lord who strongly resembles McCloud disappears after a by, McCloud assumes his identity, goes to prison, and tries to con the crime family who was setting up a French Connection with the drug lord.
Newly appointed police chief of investigation Amy Prentiss gets her hands full when a crown witness is found dead.
The McMillans' maid Mildred is serving on the jury deliberating on the fate of San Francisco football star Luke Johnson, but one night she is attacked in her hotel. The jury is moved to a different hotel and in their vote for a decision, jurors vote to acquit Luke Johnson - except for juror Tom Ryan. Later that night when Jerry, a guard, gets a phone message for Tom Ryan from his stepmother Virginia Ryan, he and another guard go to Tom Ryan's hotel room, and find him shot to death. McMillan must now investigate two murders - the murder of Luke Johnson's teammate Mo ...
A party host passes out to find a strange, very dead woman in his apartment and himself as the prime suspect. Amy also takes on some phony checks and a cat burglar.
An accountant falls to his death after stealing McCloud's Stetson. The hat is tied to the embezzlement of $7 million by a consortium including the directors of a ballet company, but how?
With a very pregnant Sally at home McMillan, Sgt. Enright and Mildred travel to by train to Los Angeles to attend a police convention. In fact, they're traveling on a train that was chartered for them and about another dozen area policeman by the wealthy Aaron Hildeth. He's also invited Tommy Brown, an author whose recent book revealed supposed police corruption, in the hope that he might develop a more positive impression of the police force. The cops aren't happy to have him on board and one of them even gets into a fistfight with the writer. When Brown is found ...
A woman takes off for Mexico after apparently killing her sister's murderer, but she is actually seeking the hit man who killed them both. McCloud is assigned to escort her back to New York.
Amy investigates her first cop killing but finds her efforts blocked. Even the policeman's widow and the men in her division are uncooperative leading her to wonder what is being covered up.
Lt. Columbo takes a trip to Acapulco, but finds himself on a new case when a used car dealer commits murder on the cruise ship.
With Sally at home with the new baby, Mac is happy to entertain his mother, Beatrice, who has come to San Francisco for a visit. She has some big news: his sister Megan is getting married. Beatrice likes the young man but Mac's quick check of his background reveals that he has a manufactured identity and history. When he confronts him, he admits to being Randy Murphy and claims to have changed his name and history to hide his working class background from them - though not Megan - so they wouldn't think less of him. He does, however, seem to be keeping secrets and ...
McCloud goes undercover to trap a ring of vicious loan sharks, investigate the murder of a Navajo woman who was indebted to them, and free the innocent man who is blamed for the murder, all while stepping on the toes of the soon-to-be-retired detective assigned to the case.
A gadget-happy inventor murders his mother-in-law; Lt. Columbo is on the case.
In the second "Alamo" episode, Phyllis Norton, in her last appearance, takes over the station when Chief Clifford catches the flu, a thief kidnaps Broadhurst in order to swap him for the thief's brother, a drug-addicted mother kidnaps her addicted newborn daughter - and a time bomb ticks in the squad room ceiling.
A psychiatrist, who specializes in hypnosis, murders the husband of his mistress and convinces her to lie to the police; it's up to Lt. Columbo to discover the truth.
A faded dance star of film and stage murders her husband and makes it look like a suicide; Lt. Columbo doubts her seemingly perfect alibi.
A syndicate involved in the music industry has a major interest in a young singer. While they use pirating and bribery to sell more records, they lean on the singer's manager to get him to sign with their company.
A birthday celebration for a friend of Mac's mother ends in a murder attempt.
F. Morgan Russell, a crafty financial adviser, manages to persuade Papa Leone that he could, thanks to his wise advice, triple the value of the shares he owns, worth 450,000 dollars. Some time later, Papa Leone learns his misfortune: he is ruined. In desperation, he tries to commit suicide. It is then time for McCoy to intervene. He works out a plan to recover the money...
The first secretary to the Suarian king may have immunity from the consequences of committing murder, but Lt. Columbo is wilier than any foreign diplomat.
When McCloud looks out a window and sees unusual smoke clouds, he tracks them to an Apache chief seeking his grandson -- the grandson has followed four armed robbers who framed his father to New York, where he kills one of them in self-defense and is murdered himself, leaving McCloud and the girlfriend of the dead thief to launch their own investigation.
Mac's closest friend from France, a high-ranking police inspector who recently married a San Francisco socialite, comes to town to show her off and talk business with his wealthy father-in-law. Mac can't give his buddy the royal treatment because he's just arrested a bullying lawyer for witness intimidation. The lawyer, from the inside, apparently hires a gunman to follow Mac around and fire warning shots at him. When Mac and Sally attend a fancy-dress ball, the inspector's wife (herself an old friend of Mac's) asks to talk to Mac on an outside balcony. A rifle shot ...
A top CIA operative commits murder the way only a brilliant spy can, never guessing he'll have to contend with a man like Lt. Columbo.
Mac and Sally waffle about whether or not to sell their house, especially after a break-in, Mac's surprise birthday party, an earthquake, a skeleton, spies and con men, and stolen jewels.
An arsonist torches Chris's building, killing her nephew and a security guard. When McCloud and Chris discover the building's owner was deep in the hole and probably committed the arson for money, they launch two simultaneous undercover investigations -- one with McCloud as a builder looking for a torch, the other as the torch himself.
When three bank robbers finally get out of New Mexico prison, they high-tail it to New York -- both to get vengeance on McCloud for crippling the gang's leader and to force him to track down the bank loot -- which one of them dumped while fleeing and can't find again.
During a period of fiscal austerity for the city, Enright takes a lucrative position in a private detective agency in which a person blackmailing politicians might operate.
Bob Mayfield, a retired gold digger, is on the verge of death and J. Carter Sloan takes advantage of his condition to force him to make a 200,000 dollar life insurance contract. This policy affects the interests of Laura, Bob's sister. Laura confides in Brenda Brooks, a journalist, who manages to persuade McCoy to help Laura recover her heritage...
A crooked businessman hoping to land a Middle Eastern contract tries to "sweeten the pot" for the honest sheik and his extremely corrupt deputy by feeding women to the sheik's harem -- by kidnapping them. This has a slight resemblance to Lou Shaw's "Columbo" episode "A Case of Immunity" (episode 5.2), which aired a few months earlier.
After being shot while on a stakeout, Mac witnesses a murder in the hospital while partially under sedation while awaiting surgery. Everyone thinks Mac's story is a hallucination, but he's convinced one of the doctors murdered a patient.
When a famous bullfighter's trusted bookkeeper turns up dead in a bullring, Lt. Columbo suspects murder--with a bull as the murder weapon.
In an episode which introduces Mildred's sister Agatha to the cast (Nancy Walker had already committed to her own series for the following season, and Agatha was to become the new housekeeper), the McMillans, Mildred and Agatha go to visit a woman relative of Mildred and Agatha, a very wealthy woman who's dying -- but not quickly enough to suit one of her nephews, who's in debt to a loansharking company later described as "just this side of Murder, Incorporated." Threatened with death if he doesn't come up with the money right away, the nephew smothers the old lady in...
The third "Alamo" episode has a blizzard and a police walkout endangering the life of a protected Mob witness in the lockup, while outside a prostitute paints her customers blue!
A stage illusionist kills his employer and makes it look like a contract killing; it's up to Lt. Columbo to trick the master trickster.
Mac goes onto temporary duty as a Navy JAG and is immediately given a case defending a Navy officer accused of murder. Mac soon discovers the victim isn't who he was supposed to be and his client isn't telling the whole truth.
When McCloud and Clifford go to Sydney, Australia, to investigate a mob hit in New York, a panicked mole recognizes McCloud from a New Mexico murder case where he jumped bail, and puts out a contract on McCloud.
Quincy investigates the rape and murder of a civil servant; he finds a rash of murders and a political conspiracy.
An egotistical but successful star of a TV detective show murders his blackmailing producer and makes it look like a robbery.
Margo Bentley's about her experiences hobnobbing with powerful people worldwide just might be a best-seller. Concerned about advance publicity, she advises her agent that she'll continue working in a hotel, under an alias. Hours later, she's dead, apparently of liver cirrhosis. Unmoved by Quincy's objections, Asten releases the body to a funeral home that quickly cremates it. Then Quincy finds a strange microorganism in her blood - something he's never seen before. One of Margo's friends gives Quincy the New York telephone number of her literary agent, but Quincy ...
When Bonnie Foster shoots her ex-boyfriend, the boss of a trucking company, and flees to Oklahoma with McCloud, the trucking company's goons send an entire fleet after them along with numerous Oklahoma state troopers eager to avenge the goons' murder of a cop.
The spinster head of a family-run museum murders her brother when he threatens to dissolve the financially strapped institution.
Clara Rhodes finds her daughter, movie star Roberta Rhodes, dead in her bedroom, apparently of an overdose. Quincy remains unconvinced. Then Paul Reardon, a journalist, tells Quincy he can prove Congressman Charles Sinclair was with Roberta the night she died. Sinclair is an old friend of Quincy's, so Quincy must face the unpleasant possibility that his old friend may be linked to a murder. Quincy must sort through a maze of lies and half-truths to discover what really happened.
Mac goes on vacation in Las Vegas to meet his girlfriend, a tennis professional (the first of six "girlfriends-of-the-week" who highlighted the "McMillan" series"). While she's preparing for a banquet at a Vegas tennis tournament, she's met by a man who presents her with her stepson's prize ring ("if I had been less civilized, I would have given you his finger to go with it"). The stepson, it appears, is being held hostage for the priceless diamond necklace the tennis pro is wearing, the last of her inheritance from her late husband. Mac quickly finds that it's a scam...
The final "Alamo" episode is set during the Christmas holidays, as McCloud helps a suicidal woman on a window ledge, deals with a psychotic stalker, and tries to rescue "Santa" Clifford and Chris, who are held hostage in a children's ward at a hospital by three drug thieves.
Mac comes home from a weekend fishing trip and walks right into his own funeral. On the night he was away, his apartment was annihilated by a bomb, along with a man and a young woman. Mac stays "dead" while Enright harangues a mobster who had threatened Mac, but the mobster has an alibi for the killings. Mac and a policewoman then focus on the dead woman, a student at a community college near San Francisco. She had arranged to meet someone at Mac's apartment knowing he wouldn't be there, and had brought a burly student to serve as her bodyguard (thus his corpse was ...
As Quincy celebrates Independence Day aboard his boat with Lee, the local sheriff motors over and reports a young man found suffering from pain and breathing problems. Quincy saves the boy's life, and at the hospital finds the spine of a stonefish, one of the most toxic fish know. Except the stonefish isn't native to the California coast! Have the deadly fish migrated there, or is something else going on? When Quincy tries to learn which, powerful men in Washington start to get nervous...
Framed for killing a taxicab driver -- actually, the driver's boss, who is being investigated by the police for drug trafficking, did it-- McCloud must deal with the victim's Israeli Army sister, who's coming after him with a gun.
When Mac and DiMaggio go to meet a police informant at a waterfront setting (Mac complains that DiMaggio's car is not only cramped, but "has the baldest tires I've ever seen"), the informant's car suddenly starts up and nearly runs them down before plunging into the ocean. The informant is found later slumped in the driver's seat, with an empty suitcase beside him. It looks like he died from the impact, but Mac isn't sure and orders an investigation. Meanwhile, a suave "businessman" named Phillip shows up and starts following Mac around, inviting him and his ...
When a country-singing buddy of McCloud's freaks out and nearly kills a woman just before a scheduled trip to Russia, McCloud and Clifford accompany him to Moscow, hoping both to nab Russian mafiya drug pushers and help a scientist and his daughter -- who's involved in the heroin ring -- defect.
When Mac is scheduled to take a first-class flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, an airline executive arrives early and in mechanic's garb on the pretext of inspecting the aircraft. His real mission is to poison his wife, via cyanide injected into a champagne bottle. But a drunken passenger clamoring for more gets the lethal dose by mistake. The plane develops serious engine trouble and turns back to Los Angeles. The executive goes up to the VIP lounge to await justice -- but it comes sooner than expected when someone follows him upstairs and stabs him. Mac and a ...
The recipient of a Man of the Year award is at a banquet in his honor when the lights suddenly black out and he's stabbed to death in the mêlée. There are no fewer than 200 suspects, the number of guests at the banquet, many of whom have motives. Rabbi Small wonders, though, if any of the guests really did commit the crime. When Lanigan puffs indignantly that there are 100,000 people in the city and that thus leaves him with 98,800 suspects, Rabbi Small suggests he try to narrow it down by checking outsiders who might have had a beef with the dead man and somehow ...
Lord Charles Bridges, a noble cat burglar, swipes his party host's prize ring and hides on a balcony just in time to witness the owner's murder; on inspecting the ring, he discovers it contains microfilm plans of Buckingham Palace and places where Irish terrorists plan to plant bombs on the Queen's birthday.
To fend off a nagging Assistant District Attorney, Mac invites her to his weekly poker game. Among the other participants is Mac's dentist, who consoles Mac for biting himself while his mouth was numb from recent work on a tooth. When the dentist leaves the poker game and goes home, he finds a local TV-news anchor dead on his couch, apparently from a heart attack. The dentist's wife (who was the TV news anchor's lover) and her father (the dentist's boss) are frantic, so the dentist loads the dead man into his own car and drives it to a culvert, crashing it so it looks...
Gunfire coming from the home of two elderly, eccentric brothers leads Lanigan to the dead body of the older brother, and the younger brother injured in a fall when he fired a huge revolver at the assailant while precariously balanced on a flight of stairs. The surviving brother lets it slip that one of his nieces came to visit on the night of the murder, leaving her the prime suspect. Everyone suspects that the dead man had a huge fortune stashed somewhere in the house, which the younger brother denies. But when an octagonal box turns up missing, people suspect it was...
While trying to get on a squad tracking down a sniper (which he ultimately does, by accident), McCloud happens onto a series of murder scenes where the victims' blood was drained from them through bite marks in the neck, leading him to a retired horror-film actor who seems to live as Dracula.
The intrepid Mac is presented with a 70's version of the 1944 film noir "Laura" in his final episode. The play on names of the two detectives: McPherson and McMillan is the most clever part of this finale.
Sigma Society member Oliver Brandt murders his business partner when he threatens to expose him as an embezzler and constructs a seemingly foolproof alibi.