Countdown to Mystery: The Last of Shelia

One strategy for writing an effective mystery: plot backward. Determine the ending, build from there.

I’ve heard that’s the strategy employed by actor Anthony Perkins (Murder in the Orient Express, Psycho) and Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (A Little Night Music, West Side Story) in writing their only produced screenplay – the intricately plotted who-done-it The Last of Shelia (1973).

The film has a set-up similar to that of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, in which mystery writer Andrew Wyke  (Lau...