The plot of the Speckled Band starts with the Helen Stoner arriving at Baker Street at the house of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s very early in the morning. When Helen sat down, to show her he was and expert he told her how she got to London that day.
The environment only changed twice in the Lamb to the Slaughter. The story started in the sitting room were Mrs Maloney waited for her husband and the second environment is when Mrs Maloney went to the shop to cover her tracks. The detectives in the Speckled Band was Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, Sherlock didn’t take items at face value example he saw the bell pull was a dummy and that the bed was clamped to the floor, Dr Watson didn’t see that the bed was clamped to the floor or the dummy bell pull. The detective in the Lamb to the Slaughter Jack Noonan didn’t play a great part in the story.
Dr Roylott covered his tracks with the ventilator in Julia rooms, which didn’t lead to the outside but into Dr Roylott’s room. The dummy bell pull was put there, so that there would be a hole created in the ventilator. Also the bed was clamp to the floor so that the bed couldn’t be moved from under the ventilator. In the Lamb of the Slaughter Mrs Maloney cooked the leg of lamb so that it wasn’t trace able. She also went to Sam’s shop to get some thing and cover up saying that she was at the shops at the time of the murder. She fed the evidence to the police. To me there was a lot of suspense in the Speckled Band as I got into the story and I found out more clues, which made me keep reading, as there was a lot of description in through out the story. But in the Lamb of the Slaughter there isn’t much description through out the story and we weren’t told certain events in the story like, what did Mr. Maloney say to Mrs Maloney at the start of the story? Or who solved the case? We found out at the end of the Speckled Band that the snake was the murder weapon and how it was use to kill Julia and try to kill Helen. The snake was hidden in the safe so that know one would know that he had a snake. In the Lamb to the Slaughter we knew from the start the frozen leg of lamb was use to kill Mr. Maloney. In the Speckled Band the ventilator, the dummy bell pull, and the bed clamp to the floor were all clues that Sherlock Holmes followed up. But in the Lambs to the Slaughter Mrs Maloney had fool the police to eat the leg of lamb, which was the evidence that they needed. No clues were followed up because the police hadn’t found any at the time of the incident.
Dr Grimesby Roylott to me is a typical murderer, he has killed before and he is a very violent man but as for Mrs Maloney she is no typical murderer, she isn’t violent, she’s an ordinary women, in my eyes a women who took her anger out by taking swing and kill her husband but her actions were out of the ordinary she acted like a criminal.
Sherlock Holmes solves the murder in the Speckled Band by visiting the murder scene and inspecting each and every room with great detail finding clues un seen by the naked eye. He also talks to Helen and Dr Watson to try to put his information together and carefully puts all the information and clues together to try to solve the murder mystery. But in the Lamb of the Slaughter there were no arrests but Mrs Maloney should have been because could have been the murderer, which she is but because she was the detectives wife the police didn’t think that she could of kill him. They should of question her properly and not a few simple questions. They didn’t question her in her involvement, which every police officer should do. Mrs Maloney convinced the officers to drink whiskey while they were on duty which they shouldn’t of have, as she knew they would drink she made them eat the evidence that killed Mr. Maloney in the first place.
At the start of the reading Speckled Band I knew that Sherlock Holmes would solve the murder case but I didn’t know how he would find the clues and put them together to solve the murder case. I knew he would find clues and solve the murder case. But the Lamb to the Slaughter is very strange because it’s not a typical murder mystery it was un-expected that Mrs Maloney would kill her husband with a frozen leg of lamb how strange is that it isn’t a every day crime. The language in each story is totally different, the Speckled Band is very descriptive but the Lamb to the Slaughter is ordinary everyday language. It is easier to read Lamb to the Slaughter I prefer reading the Speckled Band because I find it interesting. The story ends in the Speckled Band, the murder case solved by Sherlock Holmes, Dr Roylott dies from the snakebite and the detail of the murder is clearly written as Sherlock explains what how Julia died and the reason why she died. But in the Lamb to the Slaughter the murder case wasn’t solved and there were no arrests may by the police as they eat the evidence, while in the next room Mrs Maloney laughs as they eat the evidence.
I prefer the story Speckled Band compared to the Lamb to the Slaughter because I find reading descriptive reading very interesting. As you read the story you find out the clues for yourself, like the detective I put all the information together but I don’t all ways get the out come that the detective got, I may have a totally different one but I enjoyed reading it. The descriptive write draws the reader into the story like the reader is also investigating the murder case. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes in a different style to Roald Dahl, as Roald Dahl uses everyday language it doesn’t draw you into the story but if Roald Dahl had written the Lamb to the Slaughter the same style that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used for the Speckled Band I would have enjoyed reading the Lamb to the Slaughter even more.
