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Detective Story
A play in three acts
By Sidney Kingsley.
First published 1949.
Published by Legare
Street Press.
Paperback.
ISBN-10: 1022892851
ISBN-13: 978-1022892859
Description:
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."
