The Five Red Herrings is a 1931 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. It's the sixth in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. When published in America its title was changed to Suspicious Characters.
Sandy Campbell, a painter notorious for starting fights, is found dead in a stream with a half-finished painting nearby. Obviously he fell in while painting, right? Lord Peter has other ideas. He begins to investigate and discovers six other painters had recent public arguments with Campbell. Five are red herrings. The other is the murderer. But who is it?
The book was adapted into a miniseries in 1975. It was also turned into a radio drama.
Contains examples of:
- Absence of Evidence: The absence of a tube of white paint from the crime scene is an important clue.
- Accidental Murder: The death was the result of a fight that ended in Death by Falling Over. Most of the mystery stems from the elaborate cover-up that ensued because the killer was afraid nobody would believe it was an accident and that the dead man had been the aggressor.
- Actually Not a Vampire: One witness is chased out of a disused part of the house by what she thinks is a zombie. She realises, on reflection, that this apparition was actually a badly-injured man hiding in the attic, which is almost as frightening.
- Asshole Victim: Sandy Campbell, a foul-tempered alcoholic who seriously hurt someone at the golf course, threatened people's lives, and physically attacked his neighbour.
- Bathos: Constable Ross giving his opinion on where Waters' missing bicycle is:In my opinion, yon bicycle is doon in the deep waters betune Arran and Stranraer, an' ye'll never see it mair till it rises oot o' the sea tae bear witness at the great Day of Judgement. Unless ye sairch for't wi' deep-sea tackle.
- Beardness Protection Program: Inverted. Gowan has a particularly impressive beard, and when it gets shaved off he becomes completely unrecognizable, even to someone who knows him well and is specifically looking for him.
- Breather Episode: This is a relatively light-hearted mystery, and comes right after the emotional turmoil of Strong Poison.
- Busman's Holiday: Lord Peter takes time out of a fishing holiday in Scotland to investigate a killing made to look like a painting accident.
- Character Name Alias: Hugh Farren wants to get away from it all, so he checks into a hotel as "H. (as in Henry) Ford" - both because it matches his initials and because he plans to fund his holiday by mass-producing landscape paintings and selling them to tourists.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The death was actually an accident stemming from self-defence (the deceased forced his way into the killer's house and started a quarrel which escalated into a struggle which ended with the killer punching the deceased and causing him to crack his head on a stove), but the killer didn't think a jury would believe this and covered it up. When Lord Peter uncovers the truth and it all goes to trial, the jury does believe him, and he's only convicted of manslaughter, with a recommendation for mercy.
- Crime Reconstruction: Lord Peter and the police re-enact the events of the murder and the following day, accumulating evidence as they go.
- Dead Person Impersonation: The version where a murderer impersonates his victim for a short period to disguise the actual time of death.
- Death by Falling Over: The death turns out to be an Accidental Murder that came about when the deceased picked a fight that ended with him being knocked over and whacking his head on a piece of hard furniture.
- Funetik Aksent: Features phonetic renderings of a range of accents from various parts of Scotland and Ireland, not to mention a travelling salesman with a very strange accent of no discernible origin.
- A Glass in the Hand: Peter is talking to a witness/suspect while playing with a tube of paint. When the witness innocently says something important to the case, Peter inadvertently tightens his grip and bursts the tube. The real clue here turns out to be the brand of paint.
- Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Lord Peter and the police are questioning a bumbling car salesman, Mr Saunders. They quickly find that he's hopelessly vague, but his secretary, Miss Madden, has the facts they need at her fingertips.
- It's for a Book: A more literal example than most: the killer acquires a tool he uses to fake up his alibi by claiming he needs it for a book-binding hobby.
- The Jeeves: Lord Peter describes Gowan's butler Alcock (who stage-managed his employer's secret departure for London) as having "the makings of a very fine schemer indeed."
- Minor Injury Overreaction: The wealthy painter Gowan has his friends and servants arrange an elaborate alibi, and skips the country in the middle of the night, because Campbell cut off his prized beard.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: Features several foul-mouthed characters, whose utterances are hidden variously behind euphemisms ("I'll break your qualified neck for this") and a large number of dashes, with or without an initial letter. (When there's an initial letter, it's most often a "b" — and, interestingly, the word "bastard" appears openly more than once, suggesting that "b———" is something even stronger. note )
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Discussed. Lord Peter says that if he ever writes a detective novel, it will begin with a man being murdered in such a way that there's only one, very obvious, suspect, and end, twenty chapters full of red herrings later, with the revelation that it was the obvious suspect who did it. Parker laughs and mentions that this is the ordinary solution in real life.
- Of Corpse He's Alive: It initially seems that Campbell slipped and fell to his death while out painting, but it's quickly established that he's been dead since before he was seen heading out to paint, and ultimately that every time somebody thought they saw him alive that morning was his killer impersonating him to lay a false trail. (It's not a full example of the trope, however, as the killer does it by dressing in his distinctive outerwear and never goes to the extreme of puppeteering the corpse itself.)
- Oop North: Set largely in the south of Scotland, but occasionally crosses the border.
- Shout-Out: There are mentions of several other detective novels. At least two of them are deliberate hints to the solution of the murder: "Sir John Magill's Last Journey" in which the murderer impersonates his victim to conceal the true time of death, and "The Two Tickets Puzzle", in which a vital railway ticket is forged.
- Tempting Fate: Played for laughs. One of the police officers, having developed a pet theory about who did the murder, remarks that he'll eat his hat if a particular piece of evidence doesn't belong to his preferred suspect... and almost immediately receives a telephone call proving definitely that it doesn't.
- This Is a Work of Fiction: Has its own special notice on the dedication page, stating that the places and train timetables are real, but the characters and their goings-on are entirely fictional and "just put in for fun and to make it more exciting". It goes on to say that if any real people have the same name as an unpleasant character it's only a coincidence; "even bad characters have to be called something".
- Violent Glaswegian: Campbell, the hot-tempered Asshole Victim, is specifically stated to have been born in Glasgow. And for added stereotypical value, his mother is mentioned to have been Irish.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Part of the evidence against Waters is the absence of his bicycle, and the police note that they don't know whether to arrest Waters, or make a search for a bicycle thief. Waters is innocent, and the bicycle thief is never mentioned again.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Campbell is a cantankerous, belligerent drunk who's managed to get on the bad side of everyone else in his town, save for one, who's a woman married to a man he's feuding with, which only makes everyone else suspect him of adultery. This is the reason for the title, since so many people hate his guts that initial field of suspects is quite large. The ending even notes that his killer will most likely get off fairly lightly, since Campbell essentially provoked him and he's got good grounds for a self-defence justification.
- You Know the One: Provides the trope's page quote.Here Lord Peter Wimsey told the Sergeant exactly what to look for and why,* but as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page.
- The object in question is subsequently referred to by the narrator and the characters as "the missing object" until its identity is revealed as part of The Summation.
