“The car came quickly two policemen walked in.” (page 5) They start to collect evidences to convict the murderer. In Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the slaughter we can find such an investigation and we can also define the mystery which needs to be solved: The investigation starts at that time when Mary Maloney calls the police and tells them what has happened (page 5). In the following I will discuss whether this is true or not, whether Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the slaughter carries the main features of that genre or not.Ī criminal story always centres upon the investigation of a crime and a puzzle element that must be solved.
It occurred to me that the story better fits into the genre of crime fiction. While the men are eating up the murder weapon, Mary Maloney starts to laugh sillily.ĭahl touches the taboo theme of commiting a murder here which is not typical for a short story. On the contrary, she offers them a glas of whiskey and prepares the lamb for them. By telling her story, it does not occur to the police officers to suspect her. Afterwards, she goes out to buy some vegetables in a grocery shop to prepare the dinner, calls the police and tells them an invented story to cover up her murder. When she comes back she knocks him down with the frozen leg of lamb. Then she nearly automatically goes to the freezer in the cellar to get a leg of lamb. At first, she does not believe what her husband told her and ignores it. Then her husband asks her to sit down and to listen to him.
She carefully looks after him and reads his wishes from his eyes.
It describes the evening of the murder of a man who was killed by his wife Mary Maloney: One evening Mary Maloney waits for her husband who soon comes home. The short story Lamb to the slaughter was inspired by a meeting with the writer Ian Fleming, who is famous for his mystery and crime stories, at a dinner party. After this succes Dahl won several other prices for his stories which are so different from other children’s books. In 1983 he won the Whitbread Children's Book Award for his story Witches. Among others he published worldwide known stories like James amd the giant peach (1961) or Charlie and the chocolate factory (1964) which were also filmed. Soon Dahl regognised his inclination towards children's literature and he started to write such stories himself. They had five children but his family life was troubled by several tragedies. In 1953 Dahl married the successful and wealthy actress Patricia Neal. In 1954 Dahl reached international succes with the short story collection Someone like you which also includes Lamb to the slaughter. During that time he started writing stories about pilots and flying which appeared in 1945 in the collection Over to you. In 1942 Dahl moved to Washington as the Assistant to the British Air Attaché. During World War II he served in the Royal Air Forces in Libya, Greece, and Syria. When he came back to England in 1933, he joined the Shell Oil Company in London and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania for the next six years. Aged 18, Dahl took part in and expedition to Newfoundland instead of going to universitiy. The familiy suffered from poverty and had to sell their goods in order to guarantee Dahl’s education at a private boarding-school. Born in September 1916 in Llandaff, Wales, Roald Dahl’s early childhood was destroyed by the early death of his father and his elder sister when Dahl was four years old. The short story “Lamb to the slaughter” ist probably the most famous of Roald Dahl’s literary works. Lamb to the slaughter – a detective story?