A gun dealer shows up dead in an L.A. hotel room, and the evidence -- including a spilled bottle of Irish whiskey -- leads Columbo to the popular poet Joe Devlin. Once a member of the Irish Republican Army but now supposedly reformed and working to raise money for victims of the conflict, Devlin in reality conspires with an influential Irish shipping family to run a cache of automatic weapons to the Emerald Isle.
This episode is outstanding for the brisk repartee between the witty Irish versifier and the admiring Italian-American Lieutenant (two sides of the same ethnic coin, so to speak). The conclusion is as fast-paced and exciting as Columbo gets, including a crosstown chase-scene (that's right, a chase-scene!), and the Irish instrumentals throughout the program are surely the best score of the entire "Columbo" series.