Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. A Poetics for Thugs Varun Begley 2. You'll Never Be Without a Police Siren: Pinter and the Subject of Law Marc Silverstein 3. Harold Pinter Before the Law Steven Price 4. Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes: Violation, Empathy, and Historical Remembrance Charles Grimes 5. Comedy and Crime: Pinter's Primal Power and Celebration Penelope Prentice 6. Lost in the Funhouse: Pinter's Screenplay of Kafka's The Trial Ann C. Hall 7. Lie Detectors: Pinter/Mamet and the Victorian Concept of Crime Ira Nadel 8. Gradations of Criminality in the Plays of David Mamet Kimball King 9. Melville's The Confidence Man and his Descendants in David Mamet's Work Barry Goldensohn 10. Fantasy Crimes/Fictional Lives: Lakeboat Anne M. Dean 11. David Mamet's House of Games: Performance and the Already Played Elizabeth Klaver 12. More Uses of the Knife as Signifier in The Cryptogram, The Old Religion, and The Edge Thomas P. Adler 13. Mamet's The Edge as a Figura of Otherness Claire Magaha 14. Suckered Again: The Perfect Patsy and The Spanish Prisoner Leslie Kane