In Lamb to the Slaughter, a senior policeman, Patrick Maloney, returns to his comfortable suburban home, one evening, to tell his lovingly attentive and heavily pregnant wife (Mary) that he is leaving her. In a state of shock and out of her usual character. Mary reacts to this news, by hitting Patrick over the head with a frozen leg of lamb-originally intended to be cooked for his supper-and kills him. She then calculatedly rehearses a cover up for her guilt before calling the police. In a funny final dark twist, the sympathetic investigating detectives who were colleagues of the murdered Patrick unwittingly help destroy the evidence of Mary’s crime of passion(they eat the murder weapon!)
The author of The Speckled Band uses a wide variety of expansive adjectives.
“The building was of grey, lichen blotched stone, with a high central portion, and two curving wings.”
This is imposing, ugly, stereotypical setting for murder. A threatening, uncomfortable environment, typically set up for murder.
“It was a wild night, the wind was howling outside, rain beating….”
The setting to Lamb to the Slaughter is set in the Maloney’s front room which is warm and clean, this all sets up a suburban, comfortable non-threatening scene. The setting is the opposite to the setting in The Speckled Band because Lamb to the Slaughter is a homely loving environment.
“When the clock said ten minutes to five she began to listen….”
“For her, this was always a blissful time of day…”
The characterization in both stories is completely different. Dr Grimsby Roylott from the Speckled Band dresses darkly, he is physically huge giving him an advantage over most people, he portrays anger with an evil expression on his face and he is also an ugly man. All Dr Roylotts characteristics are comparable to the building in the story. He is also a very stereotypical murder suspect; He has a violent and unpredictable temperament and is threatening in action.
Mary Maloney from Lamb to the Slaughter only had her husbands and her unborn babies best interests at heart, but this does change as the story goes on, we can see that when her husband says that he is leaving her she reacts with violence. She turns into a completely different person, then she changes again when the detectives turn up at her house, she acts as if she is innocent and she also does not show much emotion.
Sherlock Holmes is a middle, upper class man. He works as a detective and enjoys it very much, he is also cunning, arrogant and pompous but he can be as he has a first class brain. Due to all the above he is control of Watson and his character. Sherlock is better educated than most people including Watson, which make people look up to him. He is omniscient, all knowing because he predicts everything before it happens. Holmes obviously thinks a lot of himself as he says,
“there is someone more cunning than himself,” talking about Roylott.
Dahl’s coppers are useless, boring, dim witted, lazy and always a step behind. The coppers don’t look for the obvious and definitely couldn’t handle the out of the ordinary. They only work for their money and they have lots of clever methods to solve mysteries but the methods never result in anything, because the coppers are so thick it turns out to be quite comical and ironic.
“Probably under our very noses.”
At this moment in the story they were eating the murder weapon.
The ways in which both stories start are very different. In The Speckled Band the story starts of quick and pretty much straight away you are told there has already been a murder, we know from the start the story has a murder mystery genre.
In Lamb to the Slaughter there is a completely different set up, in the beginning it is a warm, happy home environment and nothing bad is expected to happen, then it takes a little time before the warm, happy home environment is broken and its not clear what the genre is.
Conan Doyle’s use of language and style is mysterious, melo-dramatic and there is a sense of tension, because it is so formal and over-the-top that it becomes unrealistic.
“A vogue feeling of impending misfortune….”
Conan Doyle uses more adjectives and adverbs, this adds to his melodramatic style. Conan Doyle uses many more abstract nouns- he creates more emotion. Conan Doyle makes you feel that you are more in the investigation.
Dahl’s use of language is sardonic while the style is more realistic.
“Alright, she told herself. So I’ve killed him”.
Dahl doesn’t want the audience to judge the characters or their situation.
Both authors have very different techniques to build suspense and hold the readers interest Conan Doyle uses great attention to detail. He describes everything in really close detail, Conan Doyle writes the stay in a very stereotypical way, Conan Doyle uses ‘Red Herrings’ such as the gypsies that Mr Roylott lets live in his grounds and the baboon and cheetah that he also lets walk round the grounds. In the Speckled Band the murder weapon is very unusual and Conan Doyle makes the reader not even expect the murderer to be an exotic snake, you also don’t expect the murder weapon to kill its owner. The step father is set up as the murderer from the start but Holmes just needs to find out he does it.
Dahl doesn’t pay great attention detail and does not hold the readers suspense using puzzles and mysteries. Dahl doesn’t use red herrings because he doesn’t want the reader to guess who the murderer is because he tells you from the start. The murder weapon is unusual as Mary Maloney gets the frozen leg of lamb from the freezer and ends up beating him to death with it which is very unpredictable.
