Compare and contrast the two short stories "The Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, and "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, picking out techniques used which make it exactly, or exactly the opposite of a typical detective story/murder mystery.

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In this essay, I intend to compare and contrast the two short stories “The Speckled Band” by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, and “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, picking out techniques used which make it exactly, or exactly the opposite of a typical detective story/murder mystery.

When many people think of a murder mystery, they think of a dark and stormy night, a large forbidding house, a gunshot heard by everyone yet seen by no one, and the phrases “you’re probably wondering why I called you all here”, “The butler did it”, and of course not forgetting “elementary, my dear Watson”. In the end, the intelligent and very observant detective solves the case, and justice, sometimes through the courts and sometimes poetic, is served.

Both “The Speckled Band” and “Lamb to the Slaughter” have ingredients for a detective story, i.e. they both have a murderer who is cold and calculating, and just that little bit mad. On the other hand, they are presented to us very differently, making one story very typical of its genre, and making the other very untypical of the murder mystery genre.

Both Conan-Doyle and Dahl use various techniques to make their stories more interesting; for example, in Dahls “Lamb to the Slaughter” the story revolves around the character of Mrs Mary Maloney, loving housewife and psychopathic killer. Whereas many stories concentrate on the detective or sometimes the victim, this story concentrates on the character of the murderer. This perspective helps with the telling of the murder, making it more unexpected. The story includes two major plot twists; the first being the murder itself, made unexpected by what we have seen of Mary Maloneys character, the setting, and the form the murder weapon takes among other things. The second plot twist is at the end, where the detectives eat the murder weapon.

Conan-Doyle used techniques in writing “The Speckled Band” also. His story revolves around the character of the detective, Sherlock Holmes, which is a preferred technique of mystery novelists, probably because it leaves a place for sequels. The story, though centred on Holmes, is told as seen through the eyes of his companion, Dr Watson, providing a good example of writing in the first person. Unlike Dahls story, "The Speckled Band" is a classic 'whodunit', and so, like many 'whodunits' there is suspense.

Although both the stories have some of the typical components of a detective story, they are presented differently, differing noticeably in the setting, the characters and of course the plot, as I intend to show in this essay.

In “The Speckled Band, the setting of the main part of the story is very typical of the murder mystery genre. The story is set in an old forbidding house. Just the look of it could make you think twice about going inside; after all, it could collapse on you any moment, as Dr Watson described.

‘In one of the wings the windows were broken, and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin.’

The manor of Stoke Moran is the kind of place that you would expect to be the setting of a murder mystery if you read the description. The more successful mystery authors like Arthur Conan-Doyle favour this type of setting (he used a ‘large forbidding house’ setting for other stories, such as “Hound of the Baskervilles”). Conan-Doyle being one of the most widely read mystery authors, alone through his use of this type of setting made the ‘large forbidding house’ a typical murder setting. Agatha Christie, another famous mystery author, used this type of setting for some of her novels. She too being one of the authors to shape the typical detective story helped this setting to become associated with this genre.

While Stoke Moran is the typical setting of a murder mystery, the Maloney residence is not. The setting fore the story is a warm 1950’s family home, belonging to Mr and Mrs Patrick Maloney. Dahl starts the story with a short description of the setting. ‘The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight, hers and the one by the empty chair opposite.’

This description as you can see is not at all like the typical setting for this type of story, and definitely nothing like the description of Stoke Moran. This technique lulls the reader into a false sense of security, making you unaware of what is going to happen. The way it is portrayed, you are shocked when the murder happens, which is exactly Dahl’s intent.

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With the murderers, Conan-Doyle went with the more traditional approach, making him very typical. The character of the murderer is Dr Roylott, a very violent man. You can assume that he is the murderer in this story just by the description Dr Watson gives of him. He describes Dr Roylott as ‘a huge man’, who possessed ‘A large face seared with a thousand wrinkles and marked with every evil passion’. He has ‘deep-set, bile shot eyes’ and a ‘high thin fleshless nose, (which) gave him the resemblance of a fierce bird of pray’

Dr Roylott would seem to be evil ...

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