Detective Story

by Sidney Kingsley

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."

Genres: Plays, Theatre

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

(22 October 1906 – 20 March 1995) was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Men in White in 1934.

Reviews

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ENGLISH: This is the second time I've watched this play, this time in the RTVE archive. The action takes place in a single night, in a police department. Different cases intertwine and the self-rightness and harshness of one of the detectives is tested, when he is personally affected by one of his cases.

ESPAÑOL: Esta es la segunda vez que he visto esta obra, esta vez en el archivo de Estudio-1. La acción tiene lugar en una sola noche, en una comisaría de policía. Distintos casos se entrecruzan, poniendo a prueba la confianza en sí mismo y la rigidez de uno de los detectives, cuando se ve personalmente afectado por uno de los casos.

[Martin Denton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seventy years ago, lively, thought-provoking dramas like Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story, bustling with interesting characters and exciting storylines, were a Broadway staple. Today, television has pretty much cornered that market, but we've lost something in this: experiencing the pulse of humanity alone in your living room isn't the same as experiencing it with hundreds of strangers in a dark theatre.

This is one of the finest plays of American theater's so-called Golden Age, and also one whose influence on contemporary drama is enormous and palpable: every police procedural on TV, from Dragnet to Hill Street Blues to Barney Miller owes a structural and stylistic debt to this smart, savvy work. Detective Story is set in the Squad Room of New York City's 21st Precinct, on a hot night in August; there's a full moon, and the officers and detectives on duty know that this portends a busy and difficult evening.

Here's some of what happens to these cops that night: Detective O'Brien has nabbed a shoplifter, an engaging but nervous young woman whose appointment at night court will keep him on duty long past his normal shift. Patrolman Barnes has brought in two gnarling, nasty gangsters called Charlie Gennini and Lewis Abbott, caught in the act of burglarizing a ritzy lady's apartment. Detective Gallagher is calmly but firmly reassuring loony Mrs. Farragut that the people watching her from the top of the Empire State Building are under surveillance by 25 officers. And Detective Jim McLeod, a hard-boiled veteran who lives and breathes justice, has several things on his plate tonight: Kurt Schneider, a heartless monster who performs illegal abortions, is about to be fingered by his most recent victim (who is hovering near death at a local hospital); and Arthur Kindred, a young, tortured veteran who rashly stole $480 from his employer to impress his girl, has turned himself in.

In the course of a tense and harrowing three hours, McLeod, his partner Lou Brody, and the rest of the squad deal with these cases and several more, some emergencies, some mere annoyances. The Arthur Kindred case tests McLeod severely: for him, things are either black or white: Kindred has stolen money and is therefore a criminal, notwithstanding circumstances or regret or his heroic record in the Navy. But the Schneider case shakes McLeod's code to its very foundation, particularly when it starts to hit close to home, with McLeod's wife Mary hopelessly embroiled in it, forced to reveal things about her past that threaten to destroy their marriage and their lives.

The brilliance of Detective Story is its ability to get us caught up in all of these tales; there's suspense and action aplenty in the play's exciting third act, as all of the loose ends get tied up and a kind of justice gets served.

[Christopher Vertosick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grateful I had my smart phone handy to better understand the 40's slang and police jargon I wasn't too familiar with lol. Anyway, I thought the play was very informative while also being entertaining and covered some pretty controversial topics that are still popular today such as abortion, police brutality, war, criminal rehabilitation and even love. I also like how it had a variety of different characters who were all very captivating and helped view the events in the story from different perspectives.

[Kristin]

I almost quit in act 1. It was moving slowly & i was getting bored. I'm glad I stuck it out, though, the ending was worth it