In 1970 in a brief, humorous essay, "Death of a Bloodsport," Anthony Shaffer bemoans the passing of "the classic, closed-circle English detective story." Though there are countless television crime series, Shaffer maintains that "lumpfish has replaced ca...

On Screen This Week's New Releases Sleuth dir. Kenneth Branagh As though being the twin brother of vastly successful playwright Peter Shaffer weren't indignity enough, minor playwright Anthony Shaffer (who died in 2001) suffered another blow last year when his...

JUDE LAW has finally admitted what critics and audiences already know that his remake of Alfie was a turkey. The actor took on the role made famous by Sir Michael Caine in 1966. But his 2004 update died a death at the...

In Sleuth, Andrew Wyke, a mystery story writer, invites his wife's young lover, Milo Tindle, to his home in order to punish him for the affair. (p. 289) The two characters in this play [engage] in an intense ambivalent relationship; extreme hate and profound affection alternately appear. Milo tries to take Andrew's wife from him, and Andrew retaliates cruelly in the first act. Thereafter, Milo repeatedly strikes back, identifying with and imitating his opponent as he tries to make things equal...

[Anthony Shaffer] has labeled his play Sleuth "A New Thriller." This is highly accurate, for, although it provides all the suspense and melodramatic devices of a thriller, it is new in that it simultaneously spoofs the preposterousnesses of the form itself. To begin with, the play is set in an English country house inhabited by Andrew Wyke, a snobbish writer of detective stories….

Now, I am inclined to regard having-it-both-ways as one of the less admirable perversions, at any rate where drama is concerned. It worries me when a man exploits all the resources of the country-house thriller, with art and consummate cunning, and then rounds on me and rebukes me for having presumed to enjoy his efforts. How can he tell me that 'the detective story is the usual recreation of snobbish, outdated, life-hating, ignoble minds' when he plainly wants my outdated bum in his theatre s...