The Spanish Prisoner and the Winslow Boy

Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet ranks among the century's most influential writers for stage and screen. His dialogue--abrasive, rhythmic--illuminates a modern aesthetic evocative of Samuel Beckett. Hisplots--surprising, comic, topical--have evoked comparisons to masters from Alfred Hitchcock to Arthur Miller. Here are two screenplays demonstrating the astounding range of Mamet's talents.

" The Spanish Prisoner," a neo-noir thriller about a research-and-development cog hoodwinked out of his ownbrilliant discovery, demonstrates Mamet's incomparable use of character in a dizzying tale of twists and mistaken identity. "The Winslow Boy," Mamet's revisitation of TerenceRattigan's classic 1946 play, tells of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and the tug of war for truth that ensues between his middle-class family and the RoyalNavy. Crackling with wit, intelligent and surprising, " The Spanish Prisoner" and "The Winslow Boy" celebrate Mamet's unique genius and our eternal fascination with the extraordinarypredicaments of the common man. "From the Trade Paperback edition."