Word: sleuths
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Shaffer took time deciding to make the theater his career. Born in 1926, he and his twin Anthony (who wrote Sleuth) grew up in Liverpool. Their father, an Orthodox Jew, was a successful real estate broker. In 1944, both sons were conscripted to work in the mines. Under the Bevin plan, depleted mines were beefed up by youngsters chosen by ballot. "It was wicked work," recalls Shaffer. Later he went to Cambridge, where he toyed with the idea of writing, and then he and Anthony teamed up to turn out three detective novels, long since out of print. Peter drifted...
...Rivalry. There has been only one Shaffer flop to date, The Battle of Shrivings, about the pitting of a peace movement leader, rather like Bertrand Russell, against an errant disciple. Ironically it opened within weeks of his brother Anthony's hit Sleuth in 1970. Peter says there is no fraternal rivalry; he suggested that Anthony, who was making films for TV, try writing again...
...story is masterful. It is 1891 and Holmes's fondness for cocaine is now an addiction. He has acquired a phantom: Professor Moriarty, a shuffling grammar-school teacher who becomes "the Napoleon of crime" when the sleuth is in a narcotic state. Shocked but dutiful, Watson lures Holmes to Vienna where the possessed detective encounters the equal genius of Sigmund Freud...
...with wit. Right next door lives Ron, a microbiologist of genius, and his faithless wife Honor. When Ward boasts that he can seduce Honor, Leeds bets him that if he does so, Ron will kill Ward within 48 hours. The resulting anarchy smacks of both the Marx brothers and Sleuth and produces two good performances, from Kenneth Oilman as Ward and Kristoffer Tabori as Leeds. Mark Medoff, whose play When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? was an off-Broadway success last season, has a rare talent for juxtaposing fear and fun. Though The Wager lacks enough emotional depth...
...cadre become involved with that cornerstone of Victoriana, the Amnesiac Lady in Distress, played by the breathtaking Norma Osborne Slater. When she is kidnaped by Warmonger Baron Von Leinsdorf-who plans to blow up Europe-Holmes has no choice. With his faithful M.D.s, Watson and Freud, the sleuth engages in a transcontinental chase scene, holding the fate of Western civilization in the calm of his hand...