Compare both the 'The speckled band' and 'Lamb to the slaughter' to a typical detective story.

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Coursework                                                            Shahzaib Butt 10.1

Detective Stories

Question

Compare both the ‘The speckled band’ and ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ to a typical detective story.

The Speckled Band

Detective stories are very popular among people. There are many of them in the form of books, videos, cassettes and soap’s. For example ‘A touch of frost,’ ‘Inspector Morse', and ‘Inspector Gadget.’ Some of these stories are humor based like ‘Inspector Gadget' whereas others are more serious. They are all still interesting because they are full of suspense and thrill, which are what people like in detective stories. Inspector gadget is an exception to the rule, the only feature it has of a detective story is that there is villain and he does get caught in the end, I think this is because it is suppose to be humorous.

In a typical detective story the reader’s expect the criminal to get caught in the end and brought to justice. In the process of this people expect the detective to look for forensic evidence, ask questions and look in the most unusual places. This has a part in creating the thrill in the story.

The most famous of all fictional detectives was Sherlock Holmes because he was an interesting and especially well thought out character. His stories are over a hundred years old, therefore contains old English which may contain some difficult to understand words. Sherlock Holmes uses close observation, and the fact that he noticed evidence in such unusual places that you could even never imagine makes his stories more interesting.

In the story “the Speckled Band” a woman called Helen, goes to Sherlock Holmes for help, because after the death of her sister Julia, she was made to move in the same room where her sister died, which was next to her stepfather’s room. She was told her room needed redecorating when it was fine. She told him, that her sister claimed to have heard whistling at night and now she was hearing the same sound. She became suspicious of the stepfather ever since she was made to change rooms. There was also no proof found of how her sister died.

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Dr Roylott married the two girls mother Mrs Stoner in India. Mrs Stoner had a large sum of money about a thousand a year. Some time after they returned to England their mother died in a train accident, and all the money was left to Dr Roylott, as long as Helen or Julia didn’t get married, but if they did a certain amount of the money would go to them. This was a strong motive for the doctor to have committed the murder. .

Sherlock Holmes got interested in the case because he saw a challenge in it. ...

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