Roald Dahl: Short Stories, Style and What to Learn
1916 to 1990
Quick answer: Roald Dahl's adult stories are cruel, funny and engineered to the last line. A craft guide to Lamb to the Slaughter, The Landlady and the mechanics of the twist.
Quick facts
- Born: 13 September 1916, Llandaff, Cardiff
- Died: 23 November 1990, Oxford
- Wrote in: English
- Known for: Someone Like You, Kiss Kiss, Tales of the Unexpected
- Signature move: The engineered twist, prepared in plain sight
- Start with: Lamb to the Slaughter
Before the children's books, Roald Dahl was a short story writer for adults, and a very good one. Someone Like You (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1960) contain Lamb to the Slaughter, Taste, Man from the South, Skin, The Landlady and Royal Jelly, stories that work like clockwork and end with a click. Television made them famous under the title Tales of the Unexpected, but the mechanism was on the page first.
This is a profile of that mechanism. Dahl is often dismissed as a twist merchant, and the twist is certainly the point, but the twists work because of what he does in the first two pages, and that is learnable.
What he actually does on the page
He gives a character one small, believable appetite and lets it grow. In Taste (1951) a wine snob bets a host's daughter against a pair of houses on naming a vintage; the bet escalates through pure vanity, and the maid's final line undoes him. In Man from the South (1948) an old man wagers a Cadillac against a young man's little finger over whether a lighter will light ten times in a row. Nothing supernatural, nothing implausible, just a want allowed to run.
He plants his ending in plain sight and trusts you to look past it. The Landlady (1959) tells you everything, the stuffed dachshund, the parrot that does not move, the two names in the guest book, and the young man's politeness prevents him from noticing. The reader notices, and the pleasure is the gap. Skin (1952) opens on a tattoo and a starving old man and you already know how it ends, which is what makes the final lines land. His prose is clean, brisk and slightly amused, and he keeps his narrators at a distance so the cruelty stays comic rather than pornographic.
The signature move
Lamb to the Slaughter (1953) is the model. Mary Maloney, six months pregnant, waits for her husband with his drink ready. He comes home and tells her he is leaving. She goes to the freezer for a leg of lamb for supper, and swings it. The rest of the story is the cover-up, and Dahl's trick is that the murder weapon and the alibi are the same object: she puts the lamb in the oven, goes to the grocer for vegetables, and comes home to discover the body. The detectives, her husband's colleagues, search for a heavy blunt object while she persuades them to eat the roast. The final line is the detectives talking with their mouths full. Every element is introduced innocently and every element is used. That economy is the lesson.
Stories to read first
Begin with these.
What to steal for your own stories
Drills, not rules.
What not to copy
The contempt. Dahl's adult stories often despise their characters, especially wives, and the misanthropy that reads as bracing at twenty pages a month becomes sour across a collection. His plots also depend on a mid-century Britain of servants and gentlemen's clubs that no longer explains itself. And a twist without a character behind it is a joke, not a story.
Life at a glance
- 1916: Born in Llandaff, Cardiff, to Norwegian parents.
- 1942: His first published piece, about being shot down as an RAF pilot, appears in the Saturday Evening Post.
- 1953: Someone Like You, including Lamb to the Slaughter and Taste.
- 1954: First of his three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America.
- 1960: Kiss Kiss, including The Landlady and Royal Jelly.
- 1961: James and the Giant Peach begins the children's books.
- 1979: Tales of the Unexpected brings the adult stories to television.
- 1990: Dies in Oxford.
What writers can take from this
- Introduce the fatal object as furniture. Never spotlight it.
- Have your victim's own good manners prevent them from noticing.
- Escalate a wager or a want in three steps, each one a little less sane.
- Stop one line after the reader understands. Never explain the twist.
- Read The Landlady and count the clues. Then count how many the protagonist notices.
Try it yourself
Write 1,000 to 1,200 words in which a polite visitor accepts hospitality (tea, a room, a lift) from someone who has done this many times before. Plant at least four clues the visitor's manners prevent them from acting on. End the story one line after the reader knows, before the visitor does.
Questions
What is Roald Dahl's best short story for adults?
Lamb to the Slaughter is the most taught and the tightest. The Landlady is the most famous for its dread, and Man from the South is the one most often filmed.
Where should I start with Roald Dahl's short stories?
Someone Like You (1953) then Kiss Kiss (1960). The collected editions sold under the Tales of the Unexpected title gather most of the essential pieces.
Why is Roald Dahl important to short story writers?
He is the clearest twentieth-century example of plot engineering in the short form: every detail introduced innocently, every detail used. Writers of crime, comedy and speculative fiction can all learn the setup from him.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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