A red herring is a deliberate misleading clue placed by a writer to distract the reader from the truth. It diverts attention onto a false suspect, a misleading event, or an irrelevant detail — keeping the reader guessing and creating suspense. The technique is especially common in mystery and crime fiction.
Where does the phrase "red herring" come from?
The origin of the phrase is itself something of a mystery, but one popular explanation involves training hunting dogs: a pungent smoked herring (which turns reddish in the smoking process) was dragged across a trail to see if hounds would stay on the original scent or be distracted by the stronger smell. A dog that followed the herring rather than the true track had failed its training.
In literature and rhetoric, a red herring is any detail that lures attention away from the actual truth, just as the fish's smell lured dogs away from the real trail. In debate and persuasion, it refers to the logical fallacy of introducing an irrelevant point to distract from the main argument — also worth knowing for GCSE English Language non-fiction analysis.
What is the purpose of a red herring in fiction?
Red herrings serve several narrative functions:
| Function | How it works | Effect on reader |
|---|---|---|
| Sustains suspense | Keeps multiple explanations plausible | Reader remains actively engaged, forming and revising theories |
| Creates false certainty | Makes the reader believe they have solved the mystery | The eventual revelation is more surprising |
| Develops character | A suspicious character may be innocent; an innocent-seeming one guilty | Reader revises their understanding of all characters |
| Extends the narrative | Without red herrings, a mystery plot would be very short | Provides structural material to fill the space before the resolution |
| Rewards re-reading | On a second reading, the red herring is visible as a deliberate misdirection | Creates a richer reading experience |
How do writers plant red herrings effectively?
A red herring must be believable enough to mislead without being so obvious that it feels like a cheap trick. Skilled writers do this by:
Making the false suspect plausible. The misleading character has motive, opportunity, or suspicious behaviour — enough to keep the reader focused on them. Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None keeps multiple suspects equally plausible throughout.
Using the narrator's limited knowledge. If the narrator does not know the truth, they cannot accidentally rule out false leads. A first-person narrator who suspects the wrong person leads the reader down the same false path in good faith.
Embedding the real clue alongside the false one. The actual solution is usually present from the beginning — the red herring makes the reader overlook it. On rereading, the true clue stands out as something the reader walked past.
Exploiting reader assumptions. Readers bring their own assumptions to stories — about who the villain looks like, what motives make sense, which characters seem too minor to matter. Skilled writers work with these assumptions rather than fighting them.
Worked example — a red herring in practice
In an Inspector Calls-style dramatic mystery, a family gathers after the death of a young woman. The eldest son is immediately suspicious — he has gambling debts, a bad temper, and was seen near her flat. He denies knowledge of her. The reader accumulates evidence against him throughout Act One.
In Act Two, it emerges that he did know her — but that his relationship with her ended long before her death, and the actual cause of her distress was his father's treatment of her in a completely different context.
Analysis: The son is a classic red herring. Priestley (in the real An Inspector Calls) gives him suspicious traits early to direct audience suspicion. His guilt is real — he did something morally wrong — but he is not the final or primary cause of her death. The audience's focus on him prevents them from examining the father closely until the revelation arrives. The red herring works because it is not entirely false: the son is guilty of something, just not the thing the audience suspected.
How is a red herring different from foreshadowing?
These two techniques are almost opposite:
- Foreshadowing plants genuine clues about what will happen — they point towards the truth.
- A red herring plants misleading clues about what will happen — they point away from the truth.
Both can appear in the same text. The challenge of a well-constructed mystery is distinguishing which details are genuine signals and which are misdirections — which is exactly the cognitive work that makes the genre pleasurable.
Frequently asked questions
Can a red herring appear in texts other than crime and mystery fiction?
Yes. Red herrings appear in any narrative where the writer wants to control the reader's expectations and create surprise at a revelation. Gothic fiction uses them to keep supernatural explanations plausible alongside rational ones. Unreliable narrators often function as red herrings — the reader follows the narrator's interpretation, only to discover it was wrong. Political drama such as An Inspector Calls uses red herrings to build up and then redirect moral judgement.
How do I identify a red herring in an exam text?
Look for characters, objects, or events that are given unusual attention or suspicious detail, particularly early in the text, that do not ultimately explain the central mystery or problem. If something seems designed to draw your suspicion but the text later reveals an unexpected explanation, you have identified a red herring. In an exam response, note both what the red herring appeared to suggest and what the actual truth turned out to be — the gap between them is the analytical point.
Is using a red herring a sign of poor plotting?
The opposite: a well-crafted red herring is a mark of skilled plotting. It requires the writer to construct a story that is simultaneously coherent on both a false and a true level — every clue must be genuinely ambiguous, pointing convincingly towards the wrong conclusion while being consistent with the eventual correct one. Writers who do this badly produce red herrings that feel like cheating (the solution was impossible to guess, or depended on information never given). Writers who do it well produce the satisfying "I should have seen that" response in the reader.
Can a red herring also be a thematic device?
Yes. In Priestley's An Inspector Calls, the Inspector himself is arguably a structural red herring in one sense: the audience spends the play trying to establish whether he is a real police inspector or something else, which is a mystery that ultimately does not resolve. But this misdirection has a thematic function — it prevents the family from concentrating on the actual moral question he poses, just as their class assumptions prevent them from taking responsibility. The red herring becomes a comment on how people distract themselves from moral accountability.
Work through a mystery text with Professor Quill at aitutors.me — he will ask you to distinguish genuine clues from misdirections, helping you build the close reading skills that earn marks.