Anthony Shaffer, 75; Wrote Popular ‘Sleuth’

Anthony Shaffer, whose devious and durable play “Sleuth” became a familiar title in theater brochures the world over, died Tuesday in his London home of a heart attack. He was 75.

Though his twin brother, Peter, made millions with such medium-to-highbrow fare as “Equus” and “Amadeus,” Anthony--born five minutes ahead of his brother--made his fortune as a mystery writer.

For the screen, he wrote “Frenzy,” at the behest of director Alfred Hitchcock. Shaffer also adapted “Sleuth” for the 1972 film version starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. They played Andrew Wyke and Milo Tindle, two men locked in a deadly game played out in a crime novelist’s manor home.

Shaffer, who worked in the coal mines of Kent and Yorkshire, at once parodied and embraced a host of English mystery story cliches in “Sleuth.” His subsequent stage efforts fell short of his most popular play’s success.

It “hangs over me,” he said of “Sleuth” last year. “It hasn’t been an unmitigated tragedy, but I do find myself confined to the mystery world.”

Shaffer was born May 15, 1926, in Liverpool, England, the son of a real estate agent and his wife. He received a degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. Shaffer worked later as a barrister, a journalist and an advertising executive before devoting his energies to writing.

With his brother Peter, pseudonymously, Shaffer wrote three mystery novels. His first play, “The Savage Parade,” based on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, closed after one performance in London in 1963.

With “Sleuth” in 1970, however, Shaffer hit pay dirt.

“It ranks with the half-dozen great thrillers of our time,” said actor Stacy Keach, who toured America in a revival of “Sleuth” opposite Maxwell Caulfield.

“Tony took such an interest in this play; he must have seen hundreds of performances of it over the years, but he’d still come backstage occasionally and suggest a line change.”

“Sleuth” transcended the routine, Keach said, for simple but uncommon reasons: “Great story, wonderful characters, delicious twists--and a great sense of humor. It’s all an actor could want.”

As a screenwriter, Shaffer adapted three Agatha Christie novels: “Death on the Nile,” “Evil Under the Sun” and “Appointment With Death.” He also lent an uncredited hand to “Murder on the Orient Express,” the film that kicked off the new Christie film cycle.

Among his most highly regarded screenplays was “The Wicker Man,” about an eerie Scottish pagan community under investigation.

“Pirandello said that every play is a detective story, in a very real sense,” Shaffer said last year. “You don’t know the characters and you don’t know the plot. He was being a bit flip, as Pirandello often was, but the art of storytelling cannot be successfully done unless it has elements of concealment.”

With his first wife, Carolyn Soley, Shaffer had two daughters. He is also survived by his second wife, actress Diane Cilento.