Both 'Lamb to the Slaughter' and 'The Speckled Band' share some characteristics of murder mysteries - What are the similarities and differences between the two stories? Did any of the stories make you want to read on more than the other?

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Both ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ and ‘The Speckled Band’ share some characteristics of murder mysteries. What are the similarities and differences between the two stories? Did any of the stories make you want to read on more than the other?

Roald Dahl wrote ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ in 1954; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote ‘The Speckled Band’ in 1892.  Both these stories are based on the murder mystery genre.

‘The Speckled Band’ is a Sherlock Holmes Chronicle, which immediately gives you an image of mysteries being solved. The main character, Sherlock Holmes, is a clever, cunning, assertive and very knowledgeable man. The victim, Helen Stoner, living with her stepfather approaching the day of her marriage, is what you could call a typical victim. Helen Stoner’s sister died two years earlier due to sudden shock. Now, she herself begins to hear a hissing noise that her sister heard the night before her death.

An image is immediately put into your head that the stepfather, Dr Roylott, is a major part in the story. Dr Roylott married Helen Stoner’s mother in India. He has a love for keeping strange animals, such as a baboon and a cheetah. Dr Roylott is someone you could class as a typical villain. He is described as being, ‘so tall that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway’ and that he was, ‘marked with every evil passion.’ This type of villain is typical of a 19th century story. The victim’s sister, Helen Stoner, is the lady who summons Sherlock to solve the mystery of her sister’s death.

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‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is slightly different. There is a slight twist to the story, which Roald Dahl has been known for in the past. The villain, Mary Maloney, a pregnant woman, would not have been suspected of being the villain, rather the victim.  She is a housewife who seems to be a loving, caring person, and very attentive  –

                                ‘But darling you must eat’

- Who, in fact, turns out to be a scheming, intelligent woman who kills her husband. She kills him by hitting him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. The ...

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