[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….

Shaffer brings the fiction world and the real world together with superb simplicity. Wyke invites into his lair a trusting young man named Milo Tindle, who has secretly been having an affair with Mrs. Wyke. Instead of playing by the rules of the game of life in which a sophisticated husband tends to avoid confrontation, the host startles his guest, who has just settled down with a drink, by casually telling him, "I understand you want to marry my wife." Now the decorums have been...