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The Speckled Band Suspense

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The audience is asking himself or herself if the detective will be able to catch Mary Maloney to create anticipation. The final mystery element the author used is dramatic irony. The author uses the irony to build anticipation and make the reader laugh. Dahl creates dramatic irony while the detectives are unknowingly disposing of the murder weapon by eating it and discussing the murder. The author wrote “Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head… So [she] killed him… ‘whoever done [the murder], they’re not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need.’ ... ‘personally, I think …show more content…

The story “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes a money hungry step father who is willing to kill his step daughters to keep his dead wife's money for himself. To expose the true killer of her sister Helen Stoner asks Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. They use clues such as a saucer of milk that revealed there was an animal; to narrow the search down to her step father being the killer. The author creates tension by using clue accumulation, red herrings and the passage of time. Additionally, William Brittan creates suspense by using dramatic irony, inference gaps and foreshadowing in “The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr”. The tale is about a man, Edgar Gault who was obsessed with locked-room murders so much he foreshadowed in the text the killing of his Uncle Daniel because of money. Lastly, mystery elements such as inference gaps, dramatic irony and many possible suspects creates anxiety for the audience in “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. This chiller was about a wife, Mary Maloney who lived for her husband, Patrick Maloney and got told by him that he was leaving her. Mary snapped and killed her husband with a frozen lamb leg, she covers up all her tracks and calls the police, his colleagues. Over “dinner” the detectives eat the lamb leg and discuss the case, one says he thinks the weapon is right under their noses creating dramatic irony. So I

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Mary Maloney “simply walked up” behind Patrick and struck him with a “big frozen leg of lamb” “as hard as she could”. This completely contrasts the starting character of Mary as a housewife whom was patiently waiting for her husband to return home, which no one had expected. She did it “simply” which moulds an image of her not needing to think through her action, effortless and swift. The readers would be disgusted at how fast her character changes, thus suspense would be created as they would constantly question themselves about how it was possible. Additionally, after she struck her husband, she thought that it was “funny” on how “he remained standing” for a while.

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So I

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Mary Maloney provides the detectives with lamb that she kills her husband, Patrick, with. When the detective declares that the murder weapon is probably right under their noses, it is ironic because the reader knows that they are eating the weapon that the detectives are seeking. Furthermore, situational irony is displayed when Dahl narrates, “At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high

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Mary Maloney was sitting in her living room when her husband, Patrick Maloney, came home. This was the premises of the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” composed by Roald Dahl. Patrick was a police officer; his wife stayed at home, which was typical for the 1950s, which was the time period of the story. The couple had been, so it seemed, happy throughout their marriage. In fact, Mary was pregnant with a baby boy.

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