Roald Dahl wrote Lamb to the slaughter in 1954, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Speckled Band in 1892, that is around 62 years apart which would make the stories slightly different to each other because they were wrote in two different centuries.
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 and died in 1990, Roald Dahl was most famous for writing children stories but he did also write some books for adults like the tales of the unexpected which lamb to the slaughter featured in. The characters in Roald Dahl’s books only ever appeared once. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 and died in 1930, Arthur Conan Doyle was a trained doctor which would have been helpful in writing his stories as he would know the medical view on his cases and that would have helped him to write his books which featured Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson what makes this book different to the speckled Band is that Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson appear more than once in Arthur Doyle’s books.
When reading the two short stories I noticed that in the Lamb to the Slaughter the story was being told by a narrator and we were following the story though Mary Maloney’s eyes and how she feels, In The Speckled Band the story was being told by doctor Watson and how he feels about Sherlock Holmes and the case and also he added what he thought might of happened. Also The Speckled Band seems to be a true Murder Mystery because we don’t know who killed Helen’s sister so it is a mystery to us as well as the characters and that adds suspense to the story and also is more interesting as we try to work out who is the murderer and how they killed the person, but in Lamb to the Slaughter we knew that Mary killed her husband and the only suspense was if the detectives will work out that Mary killed him. The stories both have different layouts and are written differently, In Lamb to the Slaughter all of the action takes place in one night