After a hiatus of over a decade Peter Falk returns as the dogged and persistent homicide detective Columbo of the LAPD. As usual he's got himself a suspect who thinks he's a cut or two above the hoi ploi.
Anthony Zerbe is our victim here and he's a magician in the tradition of Harry Houdini. And as history has taught us one of Houdini's sidelines was the exposure of psychics whom he thought were all a gang of frauds.
Zerbe knows that Anthony Andrews is a fraud and he's got some personal knowledge of that because they have some history together. Zerbe by the way is no saint either.
Zerbe is done in by one of his magician's props, a guillotine he uses in his act that proves to be all too real.
One thing about this episode, like in a few others Columbo doesn't have much of a case, he just hopes the suspect trips himself up. Andrews does in fact, but Peter Falk puts himself in harm's way to do it.
But of course he gets his man.