What Is a Red Herring? Meaning, Origin and Examples in Literature

A red herring is a clue, fact or argument that draws attention away from the truth, and in fiction it is a false lead the author plants on purpose so that the reader suspects the wrong person or the wrong explanation. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as "a fact, idea, or subject that takes people's attention away from the central point being considered". In a mystery, the red herring is the suspect with a motive and a lie who turns out to be innocent, or the clue that points one way and means something else.

The term comes from a strong-smelling smoked fish, and its figurative sense comes from a story told by the journalist William Cobbett in 1807. The popular tale that hunters or escaping convicts dragged herrings to throw hounds off a scent is not supported by the evidence, as the section on the origin explains. Every quotation below was checked in the original text.

What Does Red Herring Mean?

A red herring means something that distracts from the real question. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary puts it as "an unimportant fact, idea, event, etc. that takes people's attention away from the important ones". The term has two main uses, and a third in finance:

• In fiction, a red herring is a false clue or a misleading suspect. It is a deliberate device, and a good one is explained by the end.
• In argument, a red herring is a fallacy: bringing up something irrelevant so that the real issue is dropped. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it as "a digression that leads the reasoner off the track of considering only relevant information."
• In finance, a red herring is a preliminary prospectus a company files with the US Securities and Exchange Commission before a share offering. It is a narrow technical use, and the rest of this page is about the first two.

The literal red herring is a fish. Red herrings are herrings salted and smoked for days until they turn reddish-brown, keep for months and smell strongly. That smell is the whole point of the metaphor.

Where Does the Term Red Herring Come From?

The figurative sense comes from William Cobbett, the radical journalist, in his Political Register of 14 February 1807. London's newspapers had been printing a false report that Napoleon had been defeated, and Cobbett compared them to hounds led off the scent. He told a story from his boyhood:

"When I was a boy, we used, in order to draw off the harriers from the trail of a hare that we had set down as our own private property, get to her haunt early in the morning, and drag a red-herring, tied to a string, four or five miles over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppices, till we got to a point, whence we were pretty sure the hunters would not return to the spot where they had thrown off".

When the false news died away, he wrote: "it was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone".

The etymologist Michael Quinion, summing up research by Gerald Cohen and Robert Scott Ross in Comments on Etymology (2008) and the revised Oxford English Dictionary entry, calls Cobbett's story "presumably fictional". Cobbett repeated it at length in 1833, and the idea took hold, with it the false belief that it described a real hunting practice.

Earlier writers used red herrings with hounds for the opposite job: to lay a scent, not to break one. Thomas Nashe wrote in Lenten Stuffe (1599): "to draw on hounds to a sent, to a redde herring skinne there is nothing comparable." A late seventeenth-century treatise on horsemanship, printed in Nicholas Cox's The Gentleman's Recreation, suggested dragging a dead cat or fox to make a trail for hounds, so that young horses got used to following them, with a red herring as the last resort.

What Is a Red Herring in Literature?

In literature, a red herring is a false clue built into the plot so that the reader draws the wrong conclusion from true facts. It works because readers reason as they go. Aristotle described the trick in the Poetics (section XXIV, Butcher's translation): "It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully. The secret of it lies in a fallacy". The fallacy is a false inference. If B usually follows from A, a reader who is shown B assumes A. Show the reader a suspect who lies about where he was, and the reader assumes he lied because he is guilty.

A red herring has three parts:

1. The plant. A true detail that points the wrong way: a motive, a lie, a missing hour, an object in the wrong place.
2. The reinforcement. A second detail that makes the false reading stronger, so the reader commits to it.
3. The innocent explanation. At the reveal, the detail is explained, and the explanation has nothing to do with the crime.

The third part is what separates a red herring from a cheat. The reader must be able to look back and see why the detail looked bad and why it was innocent all along.

What Are Some Red Herring Examples in Literature and Film?

The word on the wall, A Study in Scarlet (1887). Arthur Conan Doyle's first Holmes novel finds RACHE written in blood at the murder scene. Inspector Lestrade decides the murderer was writing "Rachel" and was interrupted. Holmes tells him: "'Rache,' is the German for 'revenge'; so don't lose your time looking for Miss Rachel." Then he goes further: the word was "simply a blind intended to put the police upon a wrong track, by suggesting Socialism and secret societies." It is a double red herring, one planted by the killer for the police and another that Lestrade invents for himself.

The butler and the light, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). A man with a black beard follows Sir Henry in London. At Baskerville Hall, the butler, Barrymore, has a black beard, and Watson wonders: "Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had seen in the cab in Regent Street?" Then Barrymore is caught at night holding a candle to the window. The innocent explanation comes in chapter 9, from his wife: "My unhappy brother is starving on the moor." The light is a signal to Selden, the escaped convict. The real culprit, Stapleton, had followed Sir Henry and Dr Mortimer through London "disguised in a beard".

The double bluff, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). Agatha Christie's first novel makes Alfred Inglethorp, the victim's much younger husband, the obvious suspect, and Poirot works to keep him from being arrested. In chapter 13 Poirot explains why: Inglethorp had been "preparing a lot of manufactured evidence against himself", planning to be tried, produce an alibi and walk free, since a man once acquitted "can never be tried again for the same offence." The red herring here is the reader's belief that the obvious suspect must be innocent.

Snape, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). J. K. Rowling gives Harry every reason to suspect Professor Snape: open hostility, a limp after Halloween, a broom that bucks while Snape stares at it. The thief is Quirrell, and Snape was trying to protect Harry.

The stolen money, Psycho (1960). Alfred Hitchcock spends the first part of the film on Marion Crane and the money she has stolen, then kills her in the shower. He told François Truffaut: "In fact, the first part of the story was a red herring. That was deliberate, you see, to detract the viewer's attention in order to heighten the murder."

How Do You Write a Red Herring?

1. Know the truth first. A red herring only works against a solution you have already fixed. Decide the culprit, the method and the real clues before you plant anything false.
2. Give the red herring a real secret. The best false suspect is hiding something, just not the crime: an affair, a debt, a relative on the run. The secret explains every suspicious thing they do.
3. Make it at least as strong as the truth. Give the false lead a motive and a piece of evidence the reader can see. A red herring the reader dismisses at once does no work.
4. Reinforce it once. A second detail that seems to confirm the first makes the reader commit.
5. Hide a real clue near it. The moment the reader is busy with the red herring is the best moment to show a true clue in plain sight.
6. Clear it before the end, or at the reveal. Give the innocent explanation, ideally in a way that adds a new fact or pushes the investigation forward.
7. Check it on a second read. Every red herring should still make sense once the reader knows the answer.

The same rhythm runs through how to write a mystery novel, where red herrings sit alongside the suspects, the real clues and the investigation in rounds.

Is a Red Herring Fair to the Reader?

Yes, as long as the false lead is something the characters themselves could be fooled by. S. S. Van Dine's second rule for detective stories (The American Magazine, 1928) draws the line: "No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself."

Raymond Chandler drew it more sharply in his "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story". His third note says important facts "must not be distorted by false emphasis. Unimportant facts must not be projected in such a way as to make them portentous." He added, in brackets: "(This creation of red herrings and false menace out of trick camera work and mood shots is the typical Hollywood mystery picture cheat.)"

The difference is between evidence and atmosphere. A suspect with a motive and a lie is a fair red herring. A narrator who lingers on a character's sinister smile for no reason is the cheat Chandler meant. P. D. James put the standard in one phrase: clues "inserted in the novel with deceptive cunning but essential fairness."

Red Herring vs Misdirection vs Chekhov's Gun vs Foreshadowing

Misdirection is the broader term. It covers a real clue buried in a list, a revelation timed for a moment of action, or a character who changes the subject. A red herring is the specific false lead within it. Chekhov's gun is close to the opposite: every detail the story makes a point of must pay off, and a red herring does pay off, only by fooling the reader. Genette calls a hint that misleads a "snare", and foreshadowing covers the true hints and the false ones side by side. A red herring that falls away at the right moment is often what makes a plot twist land.

What Is a Red Herring Fallacy?

A red herring fallacy is an argument that changes the subject so that the original question is never answered. "You say the bridge is unsafe, but have you seen how much the council spent on the new library?" The library is the red herring. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ties it to the smokescreen: "If you produce a smokescreen by bringing up an irrelevant issue, then you produce a Red Herring Fallacy."

In fiction, a character using a red herring fallacy is a useful way to show evasion. The suspect who answers "Where were you at eleven?" with a complaint about police manners has told the reader something, even if it is not what the reader thinks.

A Worked Example

Here is an original short mystery, The Night Porter, built around one red herring.

• The crime. Mrs Delacroix's emerald brooch vanishes from the safe of a small hotel in Bath overnight. Only two keys open the safe: hers and the one at the front desk.
• The red herring. Kit, the night porter, was alone at the desk.
• Plant (scene 2). Asked about two in the morning, Kit says he never left the desk. The hall camera shows the desk empty from 1.55 to 2.40.
• Reinforcement (scene 4). The detective finds a pawn ticket in Kit's locker, dated the next morning.
• Real clue, hidden beside it (scene 4). In the same scene, the safe's log shows it was opened at 1.50 with key number one. Key one is the guest's key. The reader is looking at the pawn ticket.
• Innocent explanation (scene 6). Kit left the desk to sit with his mother, who is dying in the hospital across the road. The pawn ticket is for his own father's medal, pawned to pay for her care. He lied because leaving the desk would cost him his job.
• The truth (scene 7). Mrs Delacroix opened the safe herself at 1.50, took her own brooch and reported it stolen for the insurance.

Kit has a lie, a missing hour and a piece of evidence, so the reader takes the bait. Each suspicious detail has an innocent cause the reader accepts once it comes. The true clue was on the page in the very scene that made Kit look guilty.

How Do You Track Red Herrings in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Its Codex keeps entries for characters and objects beside the manuscript and finds every place they are named, and its Timeline shows events in the order they happen and in the order the book tells them. Together they show where a red herring is planted, where it is reinforced and where it is cleared.

1. Open the Codex from its button in the menu bar. In Items, click the + (New entry) and choose Item. Make one entry for each object in the false trail, such as "pawn ticket", and add an alias for every other way you name it ("the ticket").
2. In the line under the name ("One line: who or what this is"), write what the reader thinks it means. In Description, write what it really means and the scene where that comes out.
3. Open the entry's Mentions tab. It lists every chapter that names the item, in manuscript order, with how often. The first row is your plant. A red herring with no later row has never been explained.
4. Open the Timeline from the menu bar and add two plotlines with Add plotline: "The truth" and "The false trail". Add an event to each lane with its + (Add event): Mrs Delacroix opening the safe at 1.50 on one, Kit leaving the desk at 1.55 on the other.
5. In the Inspector, set each event's Linked chapter/scene to the scene where the reader learns of it, and add the item in Linked characters/entities.
6. Switch to Story order to see the events in the order the book tells them, a column per chapter. The false trail should come before the truth is understood.
7. To follow one object, choose its entry in the Timeline's filter (Everyone until you pick one). The events linked to it stay bright, so the plant, the reinforcement and the explanation can be checked in one view.

The same Codex can hold the suspects themselves, as what to include in a story bible sets out, and the Timeline is also the place to check that the story's timeline holds together once the alibis are in.

Common Mistakes

• No innocent explanation. A red herring that is never explained reads as a plot hole. The reader remembers the pawn ticket.
• Explaining it too quickly. A false lead cleared in the next scene does not mislead anyone. Let the reader believe it for a while.
• Making it obvious. If every chapter ends on the false suspect's guilty look, readers learn that the guilty look means innocent.
• Mood instead of evidence. A sinister glance or a shadow is Chandler's "false emphasis". Give the red herring a fact.
• Too many at once. Five false suspects with five secrets bury the real clue so deep the solution feels arbitrary.
• A red herring that is more interesting than the truth. If the reader is disappointed the false suspect was innocent, the real solution needs more weight.

Which Red Herring Stories Are Myths?

• Hunters and convicts did not drag red herrings to throw hounds off the scent. Reference books repeated it for decades, and Quinion quotes one that claims escaping criminals in the seventeenth century did so. No hunting history supports it. The figurative sense comes from Cobbett's 1807 story, which Quinion calls "presumably fictional".
• Hounds were not trained by dragging a herring across the trail to tempt them. Several literary glossaries still say trainers did this to test the dogs. The older sources use the herring to lay a trail for hounds to follow, as Nashe did in 1599, not to break one.
• Cobbett's boys were drawing off harriers, not foxhounds. His story is about hare hunting, not fox hunting.

Sources

Retrieved 1 November 2026.

• Cambridge Dictionary, red herring.
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, red herring.
• William Cobbett, Cobbett's Political Register, vol. XI (January to June 1807), issue of 14 February 1807, cols. 232 to 233 (archive.org).
• Michael Quinion, "Red Herring Origin", World Wide Words, 25 October 2008, on Cohen and Ross in Comments on Etymology (October 2008) and the revised Oxford English Dictionary entry.
• Thomas Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe (1599), in The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow, vol. III (1905), p. 221 (archive.org).
• Aristotle, Poetics, translated by S. H. Butcher, Project Gutenberg eBook 1974, section XXIV.
• Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, Project Gutenberg eBook 244, Part I chapters 3 and 4.
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Project Gutenberg eBook 2852, chapters 7, 9 and 15.
• Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Project Gutenberg eBook 863, chapter 13.
• François Truffaut, Hitchcock (Secker and Warburg, 1968), on Psycho (archive.org).
• S. S. Van Dine, "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories", The American Magazine, September 1928, Gaslight text.
• Raymond Chandler, "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story", in Frank MacShane (ed.), The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (Ecco, 1976) (archive.org).
• P. D. James, Talking About Detective Fiction (2009) (archive.org).
• Investopedia, Red Herring, on the preliminary prospectus.
• Bradley Dowden, "Fallacies", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entries Red Herring and Smokescreen.