Wide Reading Comparing 'Lamb to the Slaughter' to 'The Speckled Band'

'Lamb to the Slaughter' and 'The Speckled Band' are both murder mysteries. Like most murder mysteries each of the stories have a murderer, a victim and characters acting in a suspicious or unusual way. 'Lamb to the Slaughter' is a 20th century story about a woman called Mary who kills her husband, Patrick Maloney, using a leg of lamb. This seems quite surprising at first as she seems quite loving and devoted to him- 'she …

…not have seemed so unusual when it was first written in the 19th century. I think the author of ' Lamb to the Slaughter' wants the reader to see Mrs Maloney as quite cunning and deceitful. He does this by showing that Mrs Maloney can use the fact that she was married to Mr Maloney and that she is six months pregnant to her advantage. Holmes would probably not have fallen into this same trap.