Read until the end to learn about the mystery hiding beneath the mystery...
Paul Redknapp is the head of the Design and Planning division of the L.A. branch of Bradford Architecture, an architectural bureau which recently finished the prestigious Sky Tower project in Los Angeles, a 70-storey high-rise building near Union Station. The current branch manager, Gordon O'Brien is set to vacate his position soon and while under normal circumstances, the promotion of deputy branch manager Jack Bernstein would be a mere formality, things have changed three months ago: it was Paul Redknapp who headed the Sky Tower project, and that has made him the new golden boy, and a very viable candidate to become the next branch manager. An executive meeting is planned in four days at the New York headquarters and while Paul isn't going to attend in person, he will be sending a video message to help his promotion. After asking Charlie, the marketing guy, to set-up the company , studio so he can record his video message, Paul is invited by his rival Bernstein to have lunch. Of course, this is no normal lunch, as Bernstein reveals he has found evidence Paul bribed a few people in order to get the Sky Tower built: he is to retreat from the promotion race completely. With a huge promotion in sight and his reputation at stake, Paul Redknapp decides to do what everyone would do: kill Jack Bernstein. His plan is simple: he reschedules the shooting of his video with Charlie to the following day, but in reality, he films it that very evening in secret. The next evening, he pretends to be recording his video, but he sneaks out of the studio to surprise Bernstein in his office, instantly shooting him. The pre-recorded video message will prove to be his perfect alibi... at least, so he thinks. But then LAPD Lieutenant Columbo appears at the scene, and while he seems to be very impressed by Paul's reputation and the wonder that is the Sky Tower, the police detective also seems a little bit suspicious of the architect in Stanley Allen's Columbo: The Secret Blueprint (1999), which was translated to Japanese by Oozuma Yuuichi as Garasu no Tou ("The Glass Tower", 2001).
A few years ago, I reviewed William Harrington's The Grassy Knoll, one of the original tie-in novels to the wonderful Columbo series. Harrington wrote a few of them, and they interestingly were based around real-life crimes. I only read The Grassy Knoll and while at times it felt very much like a Columbo story, at other times it also very much did not feel like one, partially because of the real-life crime focus, but also due to other story beats. The Secret Blueprint in comparison feels much closer to what you'd normally expect of a Columbo episode. It has the familiar story beats of Columbo mentioning his wife (in this case, Columbo being interested in the fancy Chinese restaurant in the Sky Tower and Paul "generously" offering to set-up a reservation for Columbo and his wife if he solves the case), the dog appears, Columbo has some chili, people mistaking him for something but the police, etcetera etcetera. It all feels genuinely like the scenes you'd see in the show.
And then we have Paul Redknapp of course, who fits the standard model of a Columbo culprit perfectly as a succesful man trying to grab the biggest chance in his career, humoring Columbo with the Chinese restaurant dinner date: no surprises here and while reading the book, you can easily imagine this as an actual episode.
And you know what, you can actually very easily visualize this as an episode, as the Japanese release features original illustrations by Yamanobe Waka, so there's actually a visual design for Paul Redknapp.
But let's get to the core mystery plot of The Secret Blueprint, and it's here where the book kinda disappoints. For let's admit it: Paul's plan is way too simple: just filming something beforehand and then pretending it was actually filmed during the timeframe of the murder. Had his plan had more stages to it, it might have been more interesting, but very few Columbo culprits try to get away with something this simple. And I think Stanley Allen also realized this, because the plot then adds a few external factors beyond Paul's control that affect his plans in unsuspected ways, adding some tension to the otherwise very boring scheme. However, for me, this didn't work. While Columbo culprits have often seen small coincidences mess up their plans in some ways, allowing Columbo a way to tear down their plans, Paul Redknapp must have been extremely unlucky for so many minor setbacks to occur during the execution of his plan, beginning with something as simple as a co-worker accidentally spilling some ink on his shirt on the day of the murder (which, unless dealt with, would create a contradiction with the video he recorded the day earlier). It's little accidents like these that upset his plans, but they're not really... satisfying to see, if I'm being honest? It's just being very unlucky, several times within a time period of just a few hours, and it just cheapens the plot a bit: as if the authors themselves couldn't figure out a more clever way for Columbo to start having suspicions about Paul, and therefore just using coincidences to create hickups in his plan.
And you know what? It's a shame, because the final gotcha moment is pretty clever. The way in which Columbo reveals how Paul messed up is great and I'd loved to have seen this in real-life with Peter Falk. I do think the gotcha is reliant on some coincidence, and it would have worked so much better if The Secret Blueprint didn't already have so many of those moments: had it been this one coincidence that had created a contradictoin in Paul's story, a coincidence that he might have not been aware of at first, but which would have been properly clewed throughout the story to us the reader, then this would have been a much better book. The Secret Blueprint is still an amusing read, mind you, but I couldn't shake the feeling the grand plan was a bit too simple to carry a whole story, and trying to add "volume" through unlucky accidents doesn't work.
But you know what, there's actually a secondary mystery about The Secret Blueprint. And that is... it doesn't appear to be available in English in the first place! The copyright page of the book notes how the original English title is The Secret Blueprint, written by Stanley Allen, copyrighted to Universal in 1999 and the licensing details, and the afterword also notes that the book is actually written by two people, Stanley and Allen, who are apparently two young writers who had been great fans of Columbo since they were young.... but I honestly can't find information on an English-language release of this book. In Japan, this book was published in the same line as the novelizations of the episodes and the other tie-in novels like the aforementioned William Harrington novels and the Alfred Lawrence ones. And you can easily find information on the original English releases of those books, but The Secret Blueprint remains obscure. By the way, the English title might suggest a connection to the early episode Blueprint for Murder, but as you can see, the story is completely original.
EDIT: the commentator sengyotei posted a reply to this post, explaining the book is in fact a pastiche written jointly by mystery writers Ookura Takahiro and Sobu Kenichi, as Stanley Allen. I haven't read anything by Sobu yet, but Ookura is of course known as a Columbo fan and the inverted Lieutenant Fukuie series is obviously inspired by Columbo, so in a way, it all makes sense.
Overall, I do think The Secret Blueprint is an interesting book. The story is hurt a bit by the simple murder plan and the many coincidences thrown by Fate at it to mess it up, but the general story development is exactly like what you'd expect of Columbo and it has all the neat Columbo-staples. The illustrations too add a lot of character. And perhaps most interesting is just the fact the book seems to come out of nowhere, with basically no information available on it in English, adding a veil of mystique. Not a perfect Columbo tie-in story perhaps, but it offers enough to keep the fans of the series entertained.
