How Far Are 'The Speckled Band' And 'Lamb To TheSlaughter' Typical Of Murder Mysteries? How Are The Stories The Same And How Are They Different? Compare The Ways In Which The Stories Are Told.

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How Far Are ‘The Speckled Band’ And ‘Lamb To The Slaughter’ Typical Of Murder Mysteries? How Are The Stories The Same And How Are They Different? Compare The Ways In Which The Stories Are Told

Murder mystery usually means where there is a murder involving money, love or revenge. The victim’s friend or a family member goes to a detective and tells them what they know about the murder and the suspects and where they were, and what they were doing at that time.

 There are a lot of famous detectives in books, TV and video for example; Sherlock Holmes, Jonathon Creek, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, Danziel and Pascoe. They even appear in children’s books and on TV, for example, Scooby Doo.

 The detective and usually an accomplice will look at all the evidence and maybe, even find a few red herrings, and suspects and keep the audience in suspense until the end when they usually set a trap and say how they found out it was him or her. Sometimes, the murder is set the other way round where the audience knows who it is but the detective doesn’t.

 I have studied the ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ by Roald Dahl, a comic crime thriller in miniature which has become one of his best known stories and whose plot must be amongst the first ever to have a freezer in it. Apparently, Ian Fleming had given the idea of the story to him over dinner. In the text Mary says can they do her one last thing and eat the evidence and they do and they say, “The evidence is probably right under their noses,” which it is, but they don’t know it. The story is quite modern and it was unusual because of the murder weapon and it was a female killer.

 I have also studied ‘The Speckled Band,’ by Arthur Conan Doyle. In the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, it appears in the Strand Magazine in February 1882 where a lady called Helen Stoner and her sister Julia live in a large house with their stepfather.

I also studied The Three Garridebs in which there is no murder, which is very weird even though it is a murder mystery, there is a mystery but it is connected to money. There is no victim in it but the villain is the main character and he is very cunning and Conan Doyle makes him come out as the victim the one who needs help when he doesn’t and the main setting is in Birmingham and Conan Doyle doesn’t describe it.

The similarities are that both the detectives are male and each had partners. The motive of the murder in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is anger and in ‘The Speckled Band’ it is money. The murder in the ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ involves an unusual murder weapon, a frozen leg of lamb. One of the detectives, Sherlock Holmes is a professional and doesn’t trust anyone or anything and investigates extremely thoroughly. The other detective doesn’t do his job well; he drinks on the job, and consumes the meal, which is the evidence. One of the villains is Mary Maloney, who wasn’t expecting to kill her husband, it was just unfortunate that he said something to make her really mad. The other villain, Dr Grimesby Roylott wants all the money to himself so he kills Julia and attempts to kill Helen.

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 These Stories are different because of the weapons; a leg of lamb and a snake and also the language is very old and archaic in ‘The Speckled Band’. But in other respects they are similar to ones I have heard about because of the thoroughness of the detectives and the motives are the same as they are nowadays.  

 The style of the writing in ‘The Speckled Band’ is very polite language using words like, ‘good day’ and using an older style of English, for example, using the term ‘the lady,’ you don’t hear that nowadays in modern English, ...

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