Detective Story
A play in three acts
Published by Legare Street Press.
Paperback.
ISBN-10: 1022892851
ISBN-13: 978-1022892859
Description:
ISBN-13: 978-1022892859
Sidney Kingsley's classic play,
first performed on Broadway in 1949, is a gripping and intense drama that
explores the seedy underbelly of crime and punishment in New York City. The
play's intricate plot, complex characters, and dark themes make it a timeless
classic of American theater.
The scene is the squad room and
office in a New York police station. The playwright presents a fascinatingly
realistic picture of routine cases brought into a metropolitan police station
in the course of a day. Out of the welter of human misery, vice and stupidity
there emerges the tragic and moving case of a decent young fellow who has
stolen money from his employer. Though a woman who is in love with him comes to
his help and the employer is offered everything that has been taken from him,
the case has fallen into the hands of McLeod, a hardworking detective whose
experience in police work has developed in him a mania for punishing all law
breakers, whom he regards as incorrigibles. Nothing will satisfy him but brutal
punishment. He is at work at the same time on a case involving an abortionist
whose attorney, failing to move him by other means, forces McLeod's wife to
confess to her husband that she had herself some years before made use of the
services of the abortionist in question. Since McLeod worships his wife and
finds in her the only happiness of his existence, his world collapses about
him. The climax comes when McLeod gets involved with another prisoner who
attempts to escape from the squad room with the aid of a revolver taken from
one of the detectives. McLeod is shot and killed. This climax is a fitting end
to McLeod's career. To the last, he had been bent upon doing what he considered
his duty in seeing that criminals obeyed the letter of the law at no matter
what cost."