Perkins, an associate professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, has published articles on several twentieth-century authors. In this essay she examines Anthony Shaffer's innovative reworking of the conventions of the traditional mystery story in his suspenseful play, Sleuth, in order to project his harsher vision of human nature.

During the 1920s, mystery stories became extremely popular with the reading public. These works offered readers a stylized form of escapism that encouraged them to believe that even after viewing the devastation of World War I some sense of ultimate order in human experience existed. They found comfort in the detective's abilities to re-estabhsh this sense of order by routing out the evil characters in these fictions and bringing them to justice. Mel Gussow in an article for the New York Times notes that in 1970 Anthony Shaffer both parodied and employed traditional murder mystery devices...