I think it would be proper to call the sub-genre into which "Lamb to the Slaughter" fits a "perfect crime story." In this case the protagonist commits a murder and gets away with it. But the perpetrator does not necessarily have to get away with murder in a perfect crime story. More often the murderer is caught because of something he or she did not foresee. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" is an early example of a perfect crime story in which the murderer got away with the crime. His story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a good example of an early perfect crime story in which the murderer is caught because he gives himself away.
Roald Dahl's story "The Way Up to Heaven" is another example of a perfect crime story in which the perpetrator gets away with what amounts to murder. The very ingenious writer John Collier wrote several stories in the perfect-crime sub genre. One of them is "De Mortuis," in which the readers knows the protagonist is going to get away with murdering his wife because he already has an air-tight alibi. In Collier's story "Back for Christmas," a man murders his wife and buries her in the basement, but he is caught because he finds out from a letter he receives in America that his wife had previously ordered an English firm to do some digging in the cellar to make a wine bin as a surprise present for her husband.
Many of the Sherlock Holmes stories are perfect crime stories in which the perpetrator is thwarted by the great detective. Two of these which are frequently assigned as reading in English classes are "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "The Red-Headed League." In the latter story the criminals do not commit murder but intend to loot a bank of a huge fortune in gold coins. The author of these stories freely acknowledged his indebtedness to the great American writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was probably the originator of perfect crime stories with "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Black Cat."
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