[The] most interesting quality of [Peter Shaffer's] work is its impersonality. His work has all the classic qualities of the traditional dramatist—cast-iron construction, a coherent and well-plotted story to tell, solid, realistic characterization, extreme fluency in the composition of lively, speakable, exactly placed dialogue—but ultimately he emerges in it as mysterious and impalpable as Walter, the central character of Five Finger Exercise, who, if he is the hero, must be one of the most chilly and enigmatic heroes on record. (p. 227)

[It] is unlikely that anyone would have predicted great things for him on the strength of these first two plays; the earlier, Balance of Terror, was a thriller about spies and counterspies tussling over an intercontinental ballistic missile, cunningly put together along conventional lines but nothing very out of the ordinary, and the later, The Salt Lands, was a patchily worked out though serious and...