Fair Play: How to Manage Clues and Red Herrings

By Michelle Barker and David Griffin Brown

By the time Agatha Christie was writing her mysteries, the concept of fair play had become the rule. Readers wanted (and still want) a chance to solve the mystery before the detective does—and if the detective beats them to it (as should be the case), a reader should be able to go back and see what they missed, where they were distracted, and which pieces of the puzzle they didn’t put together but should have.

In this way, the reader functions as a sort of silent partner in a mystery, and even though they do want a fighting chance to solve the puzzle, paradoxically they also want to be wrong.

This creates a real challenge for mystery writers. The reader must be dealt all the same cards as the detective. They should get all the same clues and information. And even though as the mystery writer you have a few aces up your sleeve—red herrings, clues that don’t get the attention they should—these must be handled with care. You can and should use them to mislead or distract the reader, but the onus is on you to be clever enough to pull it off without cheating.

A reader who feels cheated in a mystery is unlikely to return for book two.

Naturally, there are exceptions. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None breaks this rule with impunity. There’s almost no chance a reader will guess who the murderer is, but it’s such a great story most readers don’t care.

Sherlock Holmes also makes deductions the reader can’t hope to compete with, in part because he notices sneaky clues that he keeps to himself, but Arthur Conan Doyle gets away with it because the books are narrated by Watson. We might not be as smart as Sherlock but we’re probably smarter than his sidekick, and there’s some satisfaction in that.

Both of these examples, however, involve the purposeful withholding of information, and while Christie and Doyle might have gotten away with such shenanigans, don’t count on a contemporary reader to be quite so forgiving. A good rule to follow is that the reader should see every clue the detective sees. The detective’s thinking is another matter. Readers might get all the clues, but they don’t always know what the detective thinks about those clues. Quite often the detective has solved the mystery ahead of the climax and is just waiting for the final puzzle piece to be sure, or to lock in their proof for the police. So, if fair play applies to the evidence, the detective is still allowed to keep their hypothesizing to themselves.

Clues and red herrings

In theory, mystery structure is quite simple. The crime is the main (or initial) source of chaos, the investigation is the attempt to impose order on that chaos, and that investigation depends on the hunting down and uncovering of clues. Clues are the trail that leads to the solution.

But here is where things get more complicated. The author has to orchestrate this structure in a way that blurs the straight line. Not all clues should lead in the right direction, and some clues need to be overlooked or dismissed as unimportant when in fact they’re crucial. The ones that look shiniest are the strongest misdirections—and those are the red herrings.

A red herring is a fish that turns red when smoked and develops a strong smell. You’ll often read that hunting-dog trainers used them to see if a dog could stay focused on a task instead of chasing the smelly fish. This explanation shows up in both dictionaries and craft books alike, but it’s folklore.

The term “red herring” comes from a metaphor popularized by English journalist William Cobbett. In 1807, he wrote a story in his Political Register about using a red herring as a boy to throw hounds off the scent of a hare. The story was a jab at the London newspapers, which had been distracted from domestic politics by a false report of Napoleon’s defeat. Cobbett most likely made the anecdote up.

The folklore has stuck around because it’s a good image, and it fits the craft. Red herrings are a powerful tool in the mystery writer’s toolbox. They can function as an excellent distraction, making the reader look in the wrong direction or at the wrong culprit.

Red herrings are the equivalent of a magician waving a silk scarf to make you pay attention to the right hand while the left hand is hiding a coin. It also works the other way around. Often the most important clues are mentioned in passing, like in the description of a scene, and neither the detective nor the narrator points them out as clues at all.

However, if you want your readers to chase the smelly fish, the detective should also be chasing it. And if not the detective, then their assistant, or someone else in law enforcement. Someone should be sniffing after that herring in order to fool the reader into thinking it’s important.

Types of red herrings

Red herrings come in a few common forms, and a strong mystery will usually use more than one.

The false suspect is the most familiar. This is a character with a motive or a secret who draws attention away from the real culprit. The best false suspects do actually have something to hide. It just isn’t the murder.

The misread clue is a real piece of evidence that points in the wrong direction because of how it’s framed or who it seems to apply to. The detective interprets it wrongly, and so does the reader.

Planted evidence is a clue the killer leaves on purpose to frame someone else or to muddy the timeline. This works best when the detective eventually realizes the evidence was a little too convenient.

The false solution is a theory that seems to wrap everything up, often around the midpoint or the start of the third act, until a new fact comes to light and it falls apart. The reader gets the satisfaction of a solved puzzle, and then you take it away.

Red herrings in A Is for Alibi

In A Is for Alibi, there are all sorts of misdirects and red herrings that masquerade as clues, causing the reader to miss the real clues. Charlie Scorsoni, the actual killer, is a good-looking charmer who sweet-talks Kinsey into his bed to keep from being considered a suspect. It’s his law partner, Laurence Fife, who’s the first murder victim, and Fife also happens to be a womanizer. So, anytime a clue arises or a comment is made about an affair, the reader and Kinsey both assume it refers to Fife.

Then there’s the character of Charlotte Mercer, one of Fife’s ex-mistresses in an affair that ended badly. She detested the guy and also has a serious drinking problem. Everything points to her being a possible suspect, but she seems to get overlooked because her husband is a judge. Turns out she’s a red herring.

Charlotte works as a red herring because her hostility toward Fife is real. She has her own history and her own reasons to behave badly, so the author doesn’t need to invent suspicious behaviour to make readers doubt her. A red herring built out of a character will hold up better than one built from convenience.

It’s worth pointing out again that the reader sees exactly what Kinsey is seeing. Your job as the author is to make sure the reader is so swept up in the story that their ability to discern anything goes out the window. It helps to choose clues that can be misread, or read in more than one way, or point at more than one person.

Who is allowed to lie

Suspects lie all the time. So do witnesses, family members, and sometimes even the detective’s allies. Readers accept this because the detective is dealing with the same lies they are.

The narrator is a trickier case, even though a number of mysteries include narrators who can’t be trusted. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and The Silent Patient are all built around unreliable narrators. Readers love this approach when the trick works, but they resent it when it doesn’t.

The difference is where the unreliability comes from. A narrator who lies, dodges, or misreads because of their character— they’re wrestling with guilt or deceiving themselves, or they have a secret to protect—will leave a breadcrumb trail in the text. When the truth comes out, the reader should be able to cast back and see how the narrator’s unreliability made sense. A narrator who is unreliable only because the author is hiding or inventing facts amounts to tricking the reader by purposefully withholding information, which won’t have that payoff in hindsight.

Christie’s narrator in Ackroyd is the most famous test case. The narration glosses over his own actions at crucial moments, and readers have argued for nearly a century about whether it plays fair. Those who think it works point to how the clues are still on the page.

If you plan on using an unreliable narrator, scatter your breadcrumbs with precision to make sure the reveal creates a payoff rather than a letdown.

Every herring needs a resolution

Don’t leave your red herrings by the wayside. At the end of the story, the reader should understand why each false lead looked the way it did. If a suspect acted strangely, what were they hiding? If a clue pointed in the wrong direction, what did it actually mean?

A herring that vanishes without explanation amounts to a loose thread. Readers will assume the author forgot about it or slipped it in purely to fool them, and in both cases they’ll feel cheated. A good example is the dead chauffeur in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. It turned out that Chandler himself didn’t know who killed him. While the unresolved mystery arguably adds to the story’s chaotic noir vibe, it is a legitimate plot hole that slipped through the editorial cracks.

Hiding the real clues

Red herrings are only half the job. The real clues also have to appear on the page, and the reader needs a fair chance to notice them. The trick is to make them easily overlooked.

There are a few reliable ways to do this. You can bury a clue in a list of other details, so it doesn’t stand out. You can introduce it in a dramatic or action-heavy scene, so the reader’s attention doesn’t linger on it. The detective can dismiss it as unimportant. Or you can plant it early, before the reader knows what they should be looking for.

In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot finds that some of Ratchett’s wounds are deep and some are superficial, some seem to come from a right hand and some from a left, and some were made after he was already dead. Readers are led to imagine an erratic and quite possibly deranged killer. In actual fact, there are multiple murderers.

In A Is for Alibi, the killer tells Kinsey exactly what he is up to. Charlie Scorsoni says, “I thought I’d be especially winsome so you wouldn’t put me on your ‘possibly guilty’ list.” It sounds like flirting, and that’s how Kinsey takes it. Later she notices that his charm turns on or off like a switch. She sees it and dismisses it, because she likes him. So does the reader.

When the big murderous reveal finally comes, readers should be able to flip back and find the obscured clues sitting right where you left them. That’s what they’re hoping for. That is the essence of playing fair.

Coincidence and fair play

We all know real life serves up wild coincidences. You run into an old friend halfway around the world. The right self-help book turns up just when you need it most.

Reality doesn’t have to explain itself. But fiction does.

Mystery fans especially hate coincidences that solve the puzzle. A detective who stumbles onto the final clue by luck robs readers of the satisfaction of a fair-play ending. It’s akin to the puppeteer’s hand coming into view above the stage. Coincidence can launch the case, but the solution needs brains, not a convenient twist of fate.

A coincidence is usually fair game if it makes things harder for the protagonist rather than easier. In A Is for Alibi, Kinsey decides to take on Nikki Fife’s case when she discovers a second murder that features the same MO of medication poisoned with oleander. What are the chances of those two cases not being related? Almost zero. She can’t resist the challenge of figuring out the connection and solving them both—but the “coincidence” also sets up what will become a key problem: the assumption that both murders were committed by the same person.

However, there is also a convenient coincidence in A Is for Alibi, when Kinsey feels unwell and takes a nap at exactly the moment she is supposed to meet Sharon Napier—thus sleeping through the meeting where Sharon is murdered, which both saves Kinsey’s life and conveniently keeps her from seeing Charlie’s face. No cause is given for the sudden illness; it’s a narrative coincidence that exists purely to keep the plot on schedule.

In And Then There Were None, the storm that cuts the island off from the mainland is certainly convenient for the killer. He chose the island for its isolation, and perhaps the time of year, but he had no way to predict or time the storm. Readers accept it because it doesn’t solve anything or hand anyone an escape. It heightens the isolation and the drama that the killer’s plan has already set in motion.

Above all, coincidence should complicate rather than resolve. Once it starts handing out answers and easy escapes, readers stop trusting the narrative.

Clues are links in the causal chain

When the clues in a mystery are placed in order, as they are at the very end of the novel, the causal chain—from motive to opportunity to crime to apprehension—becomes apparent. But that line should only get straightened out at the climax.

Your task as the mystery author is to arrange these clues in such a way that the order of their appearance will lead both the detective and the reader repeatedly in the wrong direction.

Get the arrangement right and the reader will follow every smelly fish you drag across the trail. When the line finally straightens, they’ll see that you played fair the whole time.

Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and poet. She is the co-author of two craft books: Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling and Story Skeleton: The Classics. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in literary reviews worldwide. She has published three YA novels (one fantasy and two historical fiction), a historical picture book, and a chapbook of poetry. Michelle holds a BA in English literature (UBC) and an MFA in creative writing (UBC). Many of the writers she’s worked with have gone on to win publishing contracts and honours for their work. Michelle lives and writes in Vancouver, Canada.

David Griffin Brown is an award-winning short fiction writer and co-author of Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling and Story Skeleton: The Classics. He holds a BA in anthropology from UVic and an MFA in creative writing from UBC, and his writing has been published in literary magazines such as the Malahat Review and Grain. In 2022, he was the recipient of a New Artist grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. David founded Darling Axe Editing in 2018, and as part of his Book Broker interview series, he has compiled querying advice from over 100 literary agents. He lives in Victoria, Canada, on the traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.