From the author of Charlie and the chocolate factory , Fantastic Mr Fox and Matilda comes an unexpected tale, filled with twists and turns that will leave the reader hooked to the very end.
A short back story if you will of how I came across this story, I was looking for the perfect way to murder a character without leaving any evidence, for a short story I am working on. This quest led me to Quora, were a number of people commented on how they would murder their character in a story, some people gave very vivid details of how to carry out said crime. Worry not! These people, myself included are not crazy psychopathic serial killers that know how to evade justice, we are simply writers and as a writer one tends to have vast knowledge on various sometimes questionable topics. Anyway, while reading through the comments I came across a response with a pdf download link to a short story, I downloaded it, read the short story and was completely mind blown.

Lamb To The Slaughter by Roald Dahl is a short story about Mary Maloney and how she got away with murder, scot free. The tale begins with Mary, a six month pregnant housewife anxiously waiting for her husband, Patrick Maloney to return home from work. As soon as he arrives she makes him a drink of which he takes hurriedly and then makes another drink stronger than the last. You can tell the atmosphere is tense from the uncomfortable silence between the two, so uncomfortable I felt it on my phone screen! Mary as well as myself are left wondering what could possibly be disturbing Patrick. Till he finally comes clean to Mary, what he says is still unknown to the reader but telling from Mary’s reaction it wasn’t good. The author at this point leaves the readers mind to wonder and come up with their own conclusions. We will never know what Patrick said for sure but what we do know is he was leaving her, this new information builds tension and has the story going in an unpredictable direction. Mary’s first reaction is no reaction at all, her reasoning being if she acts like nothing happened then perhaps it didn’t happen, perhaps she just imagined the whole thing. She then decides to prepare supper for her lovely husband and heads downstairs to get a lamb leg she has stored up in the refrigerator.

As soon as she gets the leg, she goes back up stairs and is immediately met with Patrick’s refusal to eat, “ I’ve already told you,” he said. “Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.” At this point Mary completely loses it, you get filled with this feeling that something bad but exciting was going to happen and a mild fear of what was going to unfold . Mary walked up behind her husband and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head. Patrick falls to the ground, meat still in her hands and all she does is stare. And thus the sweet wife of a detective turned into a cold-hearted murderer. At this point my mouth is a gap wondering how heavy was this lamb leg ? Fortunately the author described it to be as heavy as a steel bar which might vary from 0.222kg to as heavy as 10kgs! Imagine being hit by 10kgs of frozen lamb leg at the back of your head?

Patrick’s death pushes the story forward but in a totally new direction, highlighting Mary’s reaction. It brings out the other side of Mary’s character, devious and plotting because her attitude completely changed from loving wife to cold-blooded murderer. Mary’s course of action after murdering her husband cold heartedly was simple yet brilliant. Readers may be slightly disturbed by her behaviour but that’s the point: it makes all the foreshadowing pay off. Mary puts the lamb in the stove and then after trying to speak in a steady calm way a number of times, grabs her bag and heads out the back door to buy groceries giving herself an alibi. When she gets back home and finds her husband lying on the floor she immediately calls the police .
Now the reader knows what happened to her husband but the police have no clue therefore Mary convinces the police that she had no idea what happened to Patrick resulting in an excellent use of dramatic irony that keeps escalating till the very end of the story.

The police were convinced that a weapon as heavy as the one that killed their friend had a more likely chance of being left behind by the murderer .So the frantic search for the weapon began in Mary’s home and ended in vain and exhaustion . Seeing how tired they were Mary offers them the Lamp leg she was cooking in the stove and the policemen gladly partake of it. The policemen ate the food while o talking amongst themselves about the murder weapon and where it might have been hidden. At this moment one of the officers comments, “It’s probably right under our noses.”

Dahl manages to incorporate mild feelings of dread with dark humour in the end. He created a very enjoyable and engaging short story that reader hooked to the very end.
For you who hasn’t read it yet, if you have about 10 minutes to spare, read lamb to the Slaughter. You will be engaged, slightly disturbed and hooked to the very end