Pungent Fish

Mystery writers love red herrings. We’re like magicians who distract the audience with a flourish of the right hand while we're deftly pulling a card out of our sleeve with the left.

The definition of a red herring is a piece of information in a story that distracts readers from an important truth, or leads them to mistakenly expect a particular outcome. The term “red herring” is often used to refer to a false clue—a piece of evidence readers to believe that a crime (or other action) was committed by someone other than the actual culprit.

Where did the term “red herring” originate? There are a number of theories.

One story is that dog trainers would create a trail of scent for a dog to follow in order to teach them how to hunt. To test the dogs’ ability to follow the trail of a single animal, without being distracted by other scents, the trainer would drag a smelly pickled fish across the trail in an attempt to mislead the dogs. Just like in a mystery, a red herring is a false clue to lead readers or characters in the book away from the truth.

Another origin story is that the term came from an English journalist named William Corbett around 1805. He claimed that when he was a boy he used a red herring (cured and salted herring) to mislead hounds following a fox’s trail. He used the term as a metaphor for the London press which had earned Corbett’s anger by publishing false news accounts regarding Napoleon. Fake news, if you will.

My favorite, however, is the theory that it originated in the 1800’s when British fugitives would rub a herring across their trail, diverting the bloodhounds close on their heels. Clever criminals.

The queen of the plot twist, Agatha Christie, even uses the term “red herring” in And Then There Were None. Ten murderers who had escaped conviction are invited to a deserted island by an unknown host (U.N. Owen). One by one, they’re murdered resembling the deaths of the characters in the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Soldiers”.

By the way, I’ll make mention that the rhyme, as well as Christie’s mystery, originally had a much more offensive name. For the sake of good taste, I will not tell you what it was. That’s a mystery you’ll have to solve on your own.

By the time their number has dropped to five, Vera, one of the characters trapped on the island, recalls a verse in the nursery rhyme: “Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.”

She realizes, to little avail, that they were being duped. They were looking in the wrong place for the person who was killing them one by one.

Red herrings are a staple in mysteries, as well as most literature that holds a plot twist. Without misleading evidence, it would be much too easy for clever readers to guess how the book will end. And isn’t that the magic trick…giving just enough clues, some of them false, to allow a reader to figure it all out…but not letting them figure it all out?

Another form of red herring is when one directs a discussion or argument to another issue to which the person doing the redirecting can better respond.

Don’t we see this nearly every day when a politician (no names) is being asked a question by a journalist and the politician never comes close to an answer? He or she blithely moves to some other talking point that may or may not have anything to do with the original question.

I dare you. The next time you see someone on television being interviewed and they blatantly change the subject, yell “Red Herring” as loudly as you can. Then nod knowingly and gaze about the room. You’ll see that all eyes are upon you. Point to the television and repeat is a sage voice, “Red herring.”