The great detective is also extremely clever, this is so he can spot a red herring from a mile away. He is always one step ahead of everyone else.
Now I’m moving on to talk about Sherlock Holmes’ trusty companion Watson, Watson is less observant and less clever but he always reliable. Watson is the person who always asks for the explanations at the end of the story, once they have solved the mystery. Also Watson is not one to spot a red herring and can easily be fooled by the slightest thing.
Now moving onto the villain. Dr Roylott (the villain himself) is obviously going to be the villain right from the start. You can tell by the way he acts and even by the way he dresses all of this adds to the ‘spookiness’ of Dr Roylott. The doctor has an evil look about him he is big, strong (this is shown when he bends the fire poker in Sherlock Holmes’ house) also he is very aggressive yet extremely clever and cunning. The villain in any murder mystery story always gets what he deserves either by getting killed as a result of messing with something dangerous (in this case the poisonous adder) or getting caught and put into prison for life.
Also playing a part in the story was the victim and Helen the potential victim I will now move on to them. The potential victim is always a damsel in distress who is always very vunerable and scared. The reason for the villain to kill the victim is always a very complicated one in this case if Helen Stoner had got married she would have got a third of Dr Roylott’s money which he had invested in his wife’s will.
The setting of the story like all murder mysteries is a ransacked creaky mansion. The murders always happen at night which adds to the drama of it all, the weather is always stormy with thunder and lightening and the rain is always beating down relentlessly.
The denouement or finale/climax is where everything is suddenly explained and where there is a sudden burst of activity, in this case this is where Sherlock Holmes suddenly sees something crawling down the fake bell rope which had been installed to one of the bedrooms and he hits it with all of his might. The ‘thing’ that he hits then goes back to Dr Roylott’s room and bites him instead, so when Sherlock Holmes enters the Doctor’s room he is met by a dead body of the owner and the poisonous snake curled up on top of his head. This then in the space of half a page of the short story had summed up how the murder and attempted murder took place.
Lastly of all about the melodrama. This is when things go slightly over the top so to speak, it is how some details stretch your imagination and how suddenly there is a big coincidence or how the main characters are somewhat larger than life. An example of coincidence is how the weather is appropriately stormy just on the nights when the girls are meant to be murdered. An example of something that stretches your imagination is how Dr Roylott could have trained the snake to come back once it had bitten the victim. Now I will move on to the story by Roald Dahl ‘Lamb to the Slaughter.
This story breaks all the rules of a normal murder mystery story. For a start the setting is a completely different type of place, in the ‘Speckled Band’ the setting is in an old mansion with the murders taking place at night when it is really stormy but in Lamb to the Slaughter the setting is just in an ordinary village with no thundering or lightening, it’s just a nice evening in ordinary surroundings. The second thing you notice is how the murder actually takes place, in ‘The Speckled Band’ the villain tries to plan everything perfectly and the murders seem to happen in a very complicated way but in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ nothing is planned and you don’t even know when the murder is going to take place. Also in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ we aren’t sure who the murderer is going to be. Whereas in The Speckled Band we basically know who the murderer is right from the start. In ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ we assume the murderer is going to be Mr. Maloney as he seems to come home in a very bad mood and he won’t talk to his wife. Mr. Maloney’s wife seems so innocent and it is as though all she wants is what’s best for her husband. Also in lamb to the slaughter everything is over so quickly as she just comes up behind him and brains him with the frozen leg of lamb. In the story we sometimes feel quite sorry for the murderer especially after she gets told by her husband that he is going to leave her for someone else. After she commits the murder we don’t really want her to get caught so we read on to see whether she gets away with it . Another difference is that there is no trusty companion in Lamb to the Slaughter that asks how everything has been done and how everything was found out. In contrast to ‘the speckled band’ there is also no great detective instead there is just three ordinary policemen who are investigating the murder of there collegue.
