Crime fiction has been popular in the western world since the nineteenth century. I am going to talk about a sub-genre called detective crime using Roald Dahl’s 1953 short story ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’. ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is about an innocent housewife who went into shock when she discovered her detective husband was intending to leave her, and she spends the remainder of the story trying to cover it up. The protagonist, Mary Maloney, is a typical 1950s housewife. When we are first introduced to her, she is waiting in anticipation for her husband to arrive home from work so she can cook and cater for him. When she becomes a murderer, her role illustrates the theme of unsuspecting suspects and that we, as human’s overlook the true nature