According to Wikipedia, Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter. He is perhaps most popularly known today as the author of children’s stories such as James and the Giant Peach and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory.

He was a prolific short story writer, and his story The Landlady won the 1959 Edgar Award for Best Short (Mystery) Story. The Edgar is given by the Mystery Writers of America to honor excellence within the mystery-writing field. In 1980, the MWA sponsored an anthology of two dozen short stories that had won that coveted award between 1947 and 1978. My soft-cover copy of The Edgar Winners, edited by Bill Pronzini is literally falling to pieces from having been read so often over the years.

Just ten pages long , The Landlady is classic Dahl. Young Billy Weaver, newly-appointed apprentice salesman, is sent out from London to Bath on the “slow afternoon train”, and told to find his own lodgings. A Bed & Breakfast sign beckons to him from a brightly-lit window that Billy peeks into. He sees a brightly-colored parrot in a cage, a “pretty little dachshund (…) curled up asleep” in front of the fire burning in the hearth, and a room filled with pleasant furniture.

The landlady immediately answers the door, has Billy sign the guest register and offers him tea. All very cozy.

Of course, because it’s an Edgar winner and because it’s Dahl, you just know things aren’t quite what they appear. But despite the reader’s awareness of that (or perhaps because of it), Dahl manages to create suspense and a chill of horror from the moment Billy enters the house.

Breezy & cheery, dark & macabre. Masterfully suspenseful. Brilliant.

Have you read any of Roald Dahl’s short stories?

#2 for Dead Book Darling‘s Short Story Challenge