In “A Lamb to the Slaughter” the killer is Mary Maloney. Mary Maloney murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Because in “A Lamb to the slaughter” we immediately know who the murderer is, there are no possible suspects for the reader, which contradicts the first basic rule in a murder mystery. Without any possible suspects there isn’t much for the reader to solve so there is less interactivity.
Mary Maloney didn’t pre-meditate the murder as it was done in the heat of the moment. It was in a way “post-meditated” with her forming her alibi and planning how to clear everything up after the murder was committed.
Until the time of the murder Mary Maloney was a kind, calm and loving housewife who would often wait for her husband to come home and shower him with affection. She acted cheerfully as this line suggests.
‘There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did’
It’s hard to understand how all this love and joy could turn to hatred and murderous feelings. Mary Maloney’s husband tells Mary that he is going to leave her for another woman while she pregnant. Mary’s husband and there relationship is very important to Mary and when her husband removes the thing that fuels her love for him, she no longer cares about him and decides to remove him This was her motive for killing her husband. Generally you would expect a motive to be over money or revenge so the motive in ‘A Lamb to the Slaughter’ is quite orthodox. In her shock and fury the irrational Mary Maloney retrieves a leg of lamb from the freezer and beats her husband over the head with it; killing him. She ironically kills him with a leg of lamb, which she may have used to feed him. The leg of lamb is the murder weapon here. In a detective novel the murder weapon isn’t always an actual traditional weapon.
Following the murder Mary sets out forming her alibi. Mary Maloney begun by practising what she would say when forming her alibi, by now Mary had turned shock and panic into cunning and deviousness. She then takes off to the shop putting a food, which she pretends false smile and happy attitude. She coolly picks up is for her husband’s supper. She speaks authoritatively yet politely to the shopkeeper and acts as if nothing has happened. When she gets home she make believes that she is shocked of her husbands death and calls the police immediately.
In “The Adventures of the Speckled Band” an unknown killer mysteriously kills a woman. As the woman is dying she is found by her sister. Before the woman dies she says
‘it was the speckled band’.
This gives way for many possible suspects; an obvious one being a circus gypsy, but is this just a red herring? This leaves a mystery for the reader to solve and immediately gets their attention.
The killer was Dr. Roylott. He was rich and craved to further his wealth. The victim was actually his stepdaughter who he killed to avoid losing money. This is definitely a killer and a motive worthy of a detective story.
Dr. Roylott died in the act of killing the woman and so didn’t have to form an alibi. However he done certain things to throw the inspector off, such as wearing a speckled band.
The clues in ‘The Adventures of the Speckled Band’ are quite difficult to notice and there are many red herrings. The steps the detective uses to come to his conclusion would be hard for the reader to match especially as they kept on changing.
Dr. Roylott planned the murder very well. Following is how he prepared and executed the murder. When Roylott decides to murder his stepdaughter he began changing things in her room to suit his plan. He had her bed clamped to the floor to make it immobile. He also installed a vent leading from her room into his room and then a bell rope leading from the vent down to her bed.
He used an Indian snake to kill the woman. He stood on a chair in his room and passed the snake through the vent, the snake climbed down the bell rope and bit the woman.
In conclusion I believe ‘The Adventures of the Speckled Band’ is the more successful detective story. My reasons for this are as follows. ‘The Adventures of the Speckled Band’ is more of a murder mystery, which in my opinion is the best type of detective novel because it engages the readers mind and imagination. ‘A Lamb to the Slaughter’ cannot really be called a murder mystery at all because it lacks a mystery, as we know who committed the murder right away. In fact it can’t even really be called a detective novel either because it focus much on the detectives at all. It is merely a crime story. There is little present in the novel to stimulate the reader apart from wondering whether or not Mary will get away with her crime. The climax of ‘The Adventures of the Speckled Band’ is placed at the end of the novel with everything being revealed. This means the novel gets better as it advances keeping the reader interested. ‘A Lamb to the Slaughter’ doesn’t have much depth which is essential for a detective novel. With only a small amount of things in the way of a detective novel I think ‘A Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a good novel but not a very good detective novel.
