Red Herring / Literature

• 2666: The crazy man who goes around desecrating religious icons is not the killer.
• Adventure Series: In Diving Adventure, the seedy-looking Oscar Roach applies for a naturalist job that some suspect he is unqualified for, and shows visible anger at having to be a dishwasher as long as Hal is filling the position (and interest at the comment that they'll reconsider his application if anything happens to Hal). Shortly afterward, Hal nearly dies under mysterious circumstances, but Roach is innocent, soon gets the naturalist job once Hal is ready to move on to something else, and proves to be surprisingly good at it.
• ALiCE (2014): A lot of clues seem to just kind of fizzle out into irrelevancy after they are discovered, or, once their meaning is known (like the Sandman poem), are fairly irrelevant anyway. Even if one takes them as trying to lead Christopher to realize that Michael IS Mickey, his memories have been altered so that he can’t remember or figure it out no matter how plainly it’s spelled out for him, and there’s no way for the readers to put it together because they don’t have the prior knowledge that Michael does.
• In And Then There Were None they mention a "red herring" right in the poem. For good reason, because the killer Judge Wargrave fakes his death and then drowns his assistant, Dr. Armstrong, leaving the remaining characters Vera, Philip, and William to suspect each other of being the killer. And when Dr. Armstrong disappears, murdered by drowning by the real killer, the other recall the poem saying "red herring" and try to be genre savvy and believe that the former was faking this death.
• In Meg Cabot's Avalon High, Ellie is supposed to fall in love with Lance and isn't supposed to affect the plot because her namesake Elaine of Shalott fell in love with Lancelot and committed suicide when he didn't return her affections. Ellie decides to Screw Destiny and rescue Will anyways. Turns out that her namesake was just the red herring, as she isn't the Lady of Shalott but the Lady of the Lake.
• Page-quote supplier Dashiell Hammett naturally employs this trope in a lot of his stories. Possibly the most prominent is The Continental Op short "The Tenth Clew", where a dead man's car contains nine conspicious clues that lead the Op to the tenth and only useful one: that those nine were all planted, and he should be looking at someone who has nothing to do with any of them.
• Bret King Mysteries: Most villains are Obviously Evil but not every suspicious character is a villain.
  • Ol' Whiskers from The Secret of Hermit's Peak waves around his gun and threatens anyone who ventures near the peak, however good their motives are. However, his gun is unloaded, he's the rightful owner, and he isn't working for the bad guys. He just wants to be left alone.
  • In The Phantom of Wolf Creek, the Conrad family is being targeted by hostile thieves,one of whom is a Cold Sniper. Their neighbor Mr. Burkhart, who is an expert marksman and from a rival feuding family, and his thuggish ranch hand Redneck Butler are both innocent. Surly and secretive Conrad cowboy Wily Lank is also innocent, and is merely being blackmailed by the villains.
  • In The Secret of Fort Pioneer, a movie set is plagued by a threatening archer and costly pranks/sabotage. Suspicion falls on Doc Rile, one of the few archers in the area and a practical joker who says he moved to New Mexico for his health but looks healthy. His pranks are of the harmless variety, and the arrows that keep missing the main cast are being fired from a spear gun rather than a bow.
  • Halloran from the Mystery of Bandit Gulch is an angry and unhelpful guy until the climax, but he's just bitter and paranoid about the locals after being cheated in a real estate scam.
• Dan Brown uses this Once per Book: near the beginning of each book, we are introduced to a character who is a rather unpleasant and/or sneaky fellow and has more or less the same mindset of the people orchestrating the current crisis. Naturally, they end up being completely innocent. The specific examples in each book are:
  • Digital Fortress: Greg Hale
  • Angels & Demons: Maximilian Kohler
  • Deception Point: Marjorie Tench and Lawrence Ekstrom
  • The Da Vinci Code: Cardinal Aringarosa ("Red Herring" in Italian), Opus Dei and, to some extent, Bezu Fache
• Happens rather annoyingly in Chatroom Trap. All those creeps who wanted to see the girls naked online? Have nothing to do with the crime. The culprit is the man who runs a fake model agency.
• Several Agatha Christie novels use this. The owner of a boarding house has a closet she refuses to open, even when told to by the police? Holds a remarkable supply of gin bottles. A woman refuses to see her husband, who thinks she's been kidnapped? Turns out she gained a lot of weight, and her husband is the opposite of a Chubby Chaser. And so on.
  • One in Lord Edgware Dies is really outstanding though, as it's a rare case of an inverted Red Herring. Into just about a third of the book, Hastings mentions in passing that it was the last time he saw Jane Wilkinson, which hints at either her impending murder or low plot relevance of her character after all. In fact, she is the murderer, and Hastings just had to leave Britain before her trial.
  • In Murder on the Orient Express, multiple clues turn out to be red herrings planted to confuse Poirot. He even specifically refers to the sighting of an unidentified woman in a scarlet kimono as one in The Summation.
  • Starting with her very first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The wealthy victim's stepsons had strong financial reasons to eliminate her, but the two of them turn out to be harmless. The victim's daughter-in-law and her surrogate daughter had both reasons to resent her, and access to dangerous drugs. The two women are revealed to have had schemes of their own, but they both turn out to be uninvolved in the murder plot. The mysterious doctor who visited the house turns out to be a foreign spy, but knew nothing of the murder and had nothing to gain from it. And some of the incriminating evidence pointing to the victim's husband, turn out to be planted.
• Common in Golden Age detective fiction. Dorothy L. Sayers' Clouds of Witness has a setup not unlike the one in the intro (and the book has several others!) and a later book, with six suspects, is entitled The Five Red Herrings.
• In Detectives in Togas, the slave Udo tells the boys he was at a certain place where he heard sounds of swords clashing and someone shouting constantly "Ave imperator, morituri te salutant!" The boys look for one gladiator school and don't find it. And then they stumble upon a blacksmith forging swords with a parrot constantly shouting that phrase and know: Udo was here.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: "The Beardos" would appear to be villains, stealing the Heffleys' beach chair, locker key and in turn wallets and cellphones. But, aside from the beach chair (which could have easily been a misunderstanding) and being slight jerkasses they aren't.
• Two of the Dinoverse books have this in the form of the amber key. The characters know that an amber key and preventing a disaster are essential to getting home. They find a key-shaped fragment of amber that sets off happy feelings in anyone who touches it and spends a lot of effort on the thing, but it turns out that the key is a dinosaur with amber markings who needs to survive a difficult event. The actual key is only useful in distracting other dinosaurs when a character fucks up, and is given no further thought or explanation.
• Discworld:
  • In Feet of Clay, several characters, including Vimes himself, note the horrible green wallpaper in Vetinari's bedroom while trying to work out how he's being poisoned with arsenic. In Real Life, Napoleon was poisoned by arsenic fumes from green wallpaper, and several murder mysteries have used this as a resolution. It turns out the arsenic is in the candles; Terry Pratchett treasured letters he received saying "We were SURE it was the wallpaper, you bastard!"
  • Vimes is cynical about clues as they're too convenient, and considers any half-competent criminal can invent half a dozen to leave at the scene of the crime, while any underexperienced investigator will pick up another half-dozen.
• The second section of The Dragon Waiting is a murder mystery, and is packed with red herrings. Even the identities of the protagonists are subject to crimson ichthyology: as of the beginning of the section, all the protagonists are using assumed identities which are unknown to the reader, who is left trying to guess not only which of the inn's guests is the murderer, but also which are the three protagonists in disguise. The chances are good that the reader will be proven wrong about at least one guess, possibly by having an apparent protagonist become the next victim, before the truth is revealed.
• In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel Legacy, quite early on, broadcasting exec Neal Corry discusses Intrepid Journalist Keri with holocameraman Jav. He thinks the two worked together before, but Jav says they haven't. Since we already know that at least one villain with Magic Plastic Surgery was planning to infiltrate the event, the obvious assumption is that Corry is the imposter and didn't do his research properly. It's also possible that Jav isn't who he claims to be, although as a gerbil-like alien, it's less likely that he's that particular villain. It eventually transpires that Jav simply screwed up the previous assignment and is hoping that Keri doesn't remember him.
• Graeme Base's book The Eleventh Hour is a lavishly-illustrated children's book filled with hidden clues and secrets in almost all the illustrations — including a few figurative and literal red herrings.
• In Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain, a nihilistic, entropy-worshipping death cult called the Celebrants of Oblivion is mentioned a few times at the start of the novel and Mollusk even takes Zala to meet a retiured assassin from the cult for information gathering, so you'd think they would have a bigger role in the plot at large. The Celebrants have nothing to do with the conspiracy going on in the plot. In fact, Mollusk admits that he's a member, albeit in an "honorary degree" sort of way.
• Fate/strange Fake: Haruri Borzak attempts to summon a Servant using a Mazda light bulb as a catalyst. The Servant that appears, True Berserker, has lion motifs and immediately goes berserk and injures her. Haruri assumes he did this because he was summoned in a factory that uses Nikola Tesla's alternating current. All the signs point to True Berserker being Thomas Edison, since in Fate/Grand Order, Edison has a lion motif and hates any mention of Tesla or his inventions, and the light bulb is heavily associated with him. It is eventually revealed that True Berserker is actually Humbaba, a monster that Gilgamesh and Enkidu had fought. His rampage had nothing to do with Tesla's inventions.
• In Father, Forgive Them, Red Herrings abound. None of them are the true killer, but this example is unusual in that all the suspects insist they wish they had killed the victim, and were present at the time of death, and had the means to do so.
• Galaxy of Fear: Ghost of the Jedi is crowded with these. People are dying of unknown causes as they find a Spooky Silent Library. Dannik Jerriko, a highly suspicious and surly character who soon proves to be an Anzati and able to kill without leaving marks, but he was actually hired to take out another assassin and promptly leaves the book. Then a curse or an angry Jedi ghost is made to look at fault.
• In the Gaunt's Ghosts novel First & Only, Rawne is kidnapped and tortured by Heldane. Later, Heldane thinks about how to create a "pawn" — painfully — and manipulates "the pawn" by Gaunt. Rawne reacts to Heldane and acts suspiciously about Gaunt. In the end, he is merely sensitive to Heldane, and in fact kills the actual pawn, because his sensitivity alerts him to something happening before it actually does.
• Early in Ghost Story, Harry encounters a villain he dubs the Grey Ghost: a spectral sorcerer whose features are shrouded within a grey cloak. The Ghost has some serious magical mojo, is backed up by an evil version of Harry's intellect spirit ally Bob the Skull, and upon recognizing Harry, hisses with both rage and fear. All of which points to Justin DuMorne: Bob's previous master, a onetime Warden of the White Council (whose uniform is a grey cloak)... and Harry's Evil Mentor, prior to Harry killing him in a duel. When we subsequently get multiple flashbacks to Harry's days as Justin's apprentice, we're all ready for the Grey Ghost's identity to be a Captain Obvious Reveal... until, over halfway through the book, the Grey Ghost speaks, with a voice that "was liquid, calm — and feminine". Harry figures out the spirit's actual identity (Corpsetaker from Dead Beat) a few pages later.
• Harry Potter has at least one such distraction per book. After readers started catching on that the first suspect was never the guilty party, Rowling started upping the ante with hints pointing to a second suspect... who wasn't it either.
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry, Hermione, and Ron are positive that Snape is trying to steal the above-mentioned stone. He's certainly nasty enough to be the villain. Harry doesn't find out the truth until the very end though when it turns out poor, shy, stuttering Professor Quirrell had been behind everything that happened all along, and Snape had been trying to protect Harry (while simultaneously disliking him for petty reasons).
  • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets The trio once more suspects one of the obvious antagonists, Draco Malfoy, believing he has opened the Chamber of Secrets and is attacking the muggle-born students in the school. His smugness towards the whole situation and the fact that his entire family has been in Slytherin for several generations gives credence to him being the culprit. After some amateur sleuthing they are able to debunk that though and come to suspect Red Herring #2, Hagrid. Just to keep the cleverer audience members on their toes, Percy begins acting shifty and ambitious and fits the facts of the case strangely well. Given that the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher turned out to be the villain of the previous book, Gilderoy Lockhart was also a potential suspect. Plus, Harry himself is revealed to be a Parselmouth, an ability associated with Slytherin, and keeps hearing strange, murderous voices that nobody else can hear shortly before each attack, which might lead one to the conclusion that he is somehow unwittingly responsible and he is indeed suspected by a large proportion of the student body. By the end of the book, it turns out that Tom Riddle, possessing Ron's sister Ginny through his old diary, has been behind the events of the book.
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:
    • Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban and is out to kill Harry. First reading it, and not knowing Rowling's formula, you wouldn't suspect anything. He betrayed Harry's parents, he's one of Voldemort's loyal Death Eaters and now is out to get the protagonist in order to avenge his fallen master. Despite a few counter-clues, the majority of the book is geared toward making the reader believe this. Turns out Sirius is completely innocent and was falsely accused, and the person that betrayed Harry's parents was Ron's pet rat, who turns out to be an animagus (shape shifter), and is really Peter Pettigrew, an old friend of his parents who was believed to be one of Sirius' victims. Even if you were onto the fact Sirius wasn't the antagonist, you wouldn't have seen that coming.
    • One of the most brilliant red herrings involving Snape happens here too. When he discovers the trio with Sirius and Remus, Snape flat out attempts to murder Sirius, saying "Give me a reason. Give me a reason to do it and I swear I will", which seems downright evil considering we've just found out that Sirius is entirely innocent. The kids put him down, though, and it's all good. Once again, Snape's evil nature is further revealed. Then it turns out that Snape's desire to put Sirius down had nothing to do with the werewolf attacks or the fact that he was a Death Eater, but because he still honestly believed that Sirius had caused the death of the only woman he'd ever loved, and the very plot point that saves him from being a villain.
    • After the book introduces the concept of Animagi (Wizards who can willfully turn themselves into animals at will), it seems to strongly suggest that Hermione's newly-introduced cat, Crookshanks, is actually a disguised Animagus. Ron is consistently suspicious of Crookshanks for most of the book, as he seems to be fixated on catching and killing Scabbers the rat, and several characters note that he seems oddly intelligent for a common housecat. Not to mention that the books had previously introduced Professor McGonagall as a cat Animagus, and Hermione's insistence on defending Crookshanks seems to be a set-up for a Devil in Plain Sight plot. After The Reveal, though, it turns out that Scabbers is a disguised Animagus; Crookshanks attacked him because he could see through the disguise.
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is in more of a whodunnit style, with a variety of suspects who could be working to kill Harry, because the popularity of the series had soared after the third book, a large online community had sprung up, and people had caught onto Rowling's style, meaning she had to adapt. Was it the Obviously Evil headmaster of the Academy of Evil, the Obstructive Bureaucrat who appears to be suffering Sanity Slippage, or the possibly Affably Evil guest judge who has a vested interest in Harry's success in the tournament? It turns out to be none of these suspects, but instead the gruff-yet-lovable new professor, Mad-Eye Moody, who has been supposedly helping Harry the whole time. Though, truthfully, it was a Death Eater disguised as Mad-Eye Moody, through the use of Polyjuice Potion.
    • This trope is also alluded to during the trio's conversation with Sirius. The possibility of either Snape or Lucius Malfoy being the culprit is brought up, Sirius however dismisses them for being too obvious and for lack of evidence otherwise. Snape however is given further hints in Dumbledore's memories as one of the many names that Karkaroff gives as a plea bargin, and later one of a young Bertha Jorkins mentioning that another student hexed her (we know at this point that their Hogwarts years overlapped and that Snape was known to already practice dark magic as a student). Voldemort also mentions a loyal servant at Hogwarts, before the reveal of Barty Crouch Jr., leading many to suspect that Snape really was serving Voldemort throughout the book.
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the red herring is less pronounced. There are two concurrent plots occurring: the Ministry of Magic's takeover of Hogwarts, and Voldemort's search for a weapon that can win him the war. There's a possibility though that the two plots aren't so separate when the Ministry-appointed Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Dolores Umbridge makes Harry's scar burn (which only happens when Voldemort is feeling a particularly strong emotion... or is close by). Voldemort has possessed people before, and out of the last four DADA Professors, half have been directly working for the Big Bad, Umbridge serves the role of the book's main villain and every other villain has been connected to Voldemort. This theoretical connection doesn't pan out, however. It was either a coincidence Harry's scar burned when Umbridge touched him, or Umbridge's own aura of evil is just that strong. There's a reason there was a trope named after her.
    • The resistance group, Dumbledore’s Army is secretly practicing self-defence against Umbridge’s wishes. The group includes the whiny and rude Commander Contrarian Zacharias Smith, who only joined the group to get info about Cedric’s death and spends most of his time complaining and not believing Harry’s story. This leads to a minor surprise when a completely different member, Marietta Edgecombe, rats the group out to Umbridge. Her reasoning was that her mother works for the ministry, and her job was at risk.
    • While the Order of the Phoenix is reasonably sure that Cornelius Fudge was Not Brainwashed and acting on his own accord. Several fans suspected that Fudge was secretly a Death Eater and his denial of Voldemort's return was merely an attempt to buy time for Voldemort to gain power (and potentially expel Harry and arrest Dumbledore). By the end of the book we learn that he truly was in denial about Voldemort's return and was genuinely horrified to learn otherwise.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
    • Harry suspects his two favorite nemeses, who he has falsely accused before – Snape and Malfoy – of being up to something. No one believes him, however, and there is Lampshade Hanging when various characters point out Snape and Malfoy have been falsely accused before by Harry. You are almost inclined to believe they are innocent as the obsessiveness of Harry's stalking them becomes annoying to the reader. It is obvious from his point of view that they are up to something. Everyone else gets a big slap in the face when it turns out he was right, and Malfoy lets Death Eaters into the castle and Snape kills Dumbledore. Though it turns out that Snape was acting under Dumbledore's orders. Notably, Dumbledore never explicitly tells Harry that he's wrong, only that he has it under control. Which is technically true.
    • There's a great deal of effort put into making it look like Tonks is under the Imperius curse but turns out it was Rosmerta instead and that Tonks's odd and depressive behavior is simply a result of her relationship problems with Remus.
    • Ollivander is mentioned as having gone missing at the start of the book, and is presumed to have been kidnapped by Death Eaters. However, it's stated that there were no signs of a struggle at his shop, and this, along with his slightly creepy behaviour in earlier books, might lead readers to believe that he has actually joined with Voldemort willingly. The next book reveals that this is emphatically not the case, and he really has been kidnapped, tortured and forced to help Voldemort.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, at multiple points Harry sees a glimpse of Dumbledore's twinkly eye through his shard of Sirius's enchanted mirror, giving the possibility that somehow Dumbledore faked or cheated his death. We later learn that it was actually Dumbledore's brother, Aberforth who has the same colored eyes as his brother. When Harry meets Albus in limbo the latter firmly stated that he did indeed die.
  • In a somewhat more obscure case, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them featured a red herring, of sorts: in addition to cataloging the creatures previously mentioned, a number of (at the time) new creatures were featured to help round out the scope of the setting. One of these was the Lethifold - a shadow creature, thick as a membrane, which could slide anywhere and killed people by smothering them and digesting them in their beds. It could only be defeated with a Patronus, which was, at the time, a sort of secondary Signature Move for Harry. As a result, a lot of people expected one to show up in the final books of the franchise, probably as a weapon used by Voldemort, but it never featured until a decade later in the movie of the same name (see above).
• Chaff and Seeder in the second book of The Hunger Games initially seem like they would be important characters. They are from the same distinct as Rue and Thresh and at different points, Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch all consider/advocate for them to team up. Plus Chaff being close friends with Haymitch and Seeder deliberately seeking out Katniss to thank her for looking after Rue and Thresh's families. Instead, they are both killed in the Quarter Quell without making an appearance despite both being aware of the rebel's plan.
  • In the first book, Katniss considers the possibility that the mysterious Foxface may be her real enemy due to how crafty she is and how easily she runs circles around the career tributes. This turns out to be false and she ends up being a Zero-Effort Boss.
• Illegal Aliens features a literal red herring. An alien reporter who resembles a red, anthropomorphic fish.
• In I'm Thinking of Ending Things, some of the small, creepy details that happen are clues that Jake is imaging everything inside his head. Others are just there to scare readers and don't have a deeper meaning.
• Johannes Cabal the Necromancer:
  • Johannes Cabal makes his Deal with the Devil, much fuss is made about how he has a finite amount of Satan's blood to use in his adventures. That all comes to nothing. It's mentioned a few times in the middle of the book, but by the end it's fallen out of the plot entirely. He never runs out of blood, and it's never a plot point.
  • There's another red herring at the climax when Johannes tricks the devil into demanding the box of contracts rather than all of the contracts. Thus, Johannes saves the souls of the innocents he coerced into signing.
• The Kane Chronicles: In The Red Pyramid, Carter hears Set speak French in a vision, leading him to assume that Set is being hosted by the French-speaking Desjardins. He's wrong.
• Land of Oz: In In Search of Dorothy, the Witch of the East's crystal ball shows the Witch of the West about to attack Glinda, but it turns out to be an illusion —- her real target is the Emerald City where the heroes are currently based.
• In Last Sacrifice, Adrian's mother was believed to be the Queen's murderer, turns out it was Tasha.
• In the second book of the Lilith's Brood trilogy, it's mentioned prominently that plastics are one of the only things that the Oankali can't biodegrade, and are in fact poisonous to them. One suspects on first reading that this will somehow prove important to the humans' resistance to the aliens, but it never comes up again.
• In Look to Windward, there's a story told between chapters about a Culture citizen who happens to be visiting the habitat where the Chel are plotting their attack on an Orbital. He learns about the attack from a dying Special Circumstances operative and desperately tries to get a message back to the Culture. After the attack is foiled, the reader learns that he never made it; he was killed by the Chel and only restored long after the events. His story seems to be there mainly to have a potential explanation for the Culture learning about the plot other than the real one; that one of the Chel involved was actually working for the Culture all along.
• In the beginning of Loyal Enemies the mayor of Displacing is hinted to have something suspicious in mind and it's suggested he might be a werewolf. Then the heroes leave Displacing, their adventure takes them dozens of miles from the city and the man is never mentioned again.
• Magic for Liars has a few:
  • Mr. Toff is a stereotype of a sexual predator surrounded by rumors and sleaze...but has nothing to do with the events of the story.
  • Alexandria undergoes a sudden transformation over a break and comes back with a new name, new appearance, and new willpower...but she's just a teenage girl reinventing herself.
  • Tabitha deliberately fingers Alexandria as a suspect due to the latter's previous disproportionate retribution...but that's just to take focus off Tabitha herself.
• The Mummy Monster Game: Literally, in book 2; some of the riddles that must be solved in "The Mummy Tomb Hunt" game turn out to be red herrings towards the final game location, which is represented by a red fish appearing on the screen and blowing bubbles after the clue is solved. They can still provide extra clues for solving them though.
• A minor one in Needful Things: it's mentioned several times that Seaton 'Seat' Thomas has a heart condition, and during the book's climax, he's near-constantly stated to be clutching his chest. The obvious conclusion is that his heart is going to give out and he's going to be one of the book's many fatalities, but he ends up one of its few survivors.
• Nina Tanleven: In The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed, during Nine’s first visit to Phoebe Watson’s house, she sees one ghost and hears signs of another, whom she confirms the identity of in her second visit. She also hears singing coming from the cellar, and suspects there might be a third ghost. The climax reveals that no, it’s a local street person whom Phoebe lets stay there when it’s too cold or wet outside (she’d offered him a regular room, but he refused).
• In the book Of Mice and Mooshaber, there are several plot points that appear important, but lead nowhere. For example, Mrs. Mooshaber, an employer of the ominous state agency Care of Mother and Child was assigned to take care of a boy named Linpeck who is troublesome and roams. She buys him a cake and the details imply that she's going to poison him. However, he appears in the next chapter and is all right. Mrs Mooshaber's job at the agency is another Red Herring: she is one of the good people in the story and a caring old woman. She's in fact Widowed Duchess Augusta, the rightful ruler of the country.
• Throughout the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and up to The Heroes of Olympus, the reader is lead to believe that Nico di Angelo has a crush on Annabeth. In House of Hades, it's finally revealed that he's really had feelings for Percy the whole time.
• In the Ravenor trilogy, Ravenor learns that one of his associates will cause the manifestation of a powerful daemon before the year is out. The daemon is known as Slyte or Sleet, so when Frauka learns that the maiden name of Zael’s mother was Sleet, both Frauka and Ravenor assume that Zael—who has latent but growing psychic abilities—will be the daemon’s vessel. In reality, the daemon ends up possessing Carl Thonius.
• In the Mary Higgins Clark novel Remember Me, a couple goes away for the summer to recuperate from the death of their young son. However, the woman is relentlessly plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and hallucinations about the accident in which he was killed (and she was driving the car, leaving her with considerable Survivor Guilt as well). Her husband hovers over her constantly and insists that she needs to be confined to a mental hospital. However, it turns out that his concern, while overbearing, was genuine. It turns out that the culprit is his ex-girlfriend, who's trying to drive her insane to the point of killing herself so that she can get him back—the nightmares have been induced by piping the sound of an accident and a crying child through their vacation home.
• Lampshaded in A Series of Unfortunate Events, where the protagonists believe their friends (previously captured by the Big Bad) are hidden inside a box of Very Fancy Doilies; in reality, they're hidden inside a statue of a large red fish - the red herring. A patient in the Heimlich Hospital has a name that is an anagram of red herring.
• Shatterbelt spends a lot of time on Mr. Bailey's decision to open the mine he discovered as a tourist site and the conflict this causes with the locals. The protagonist Tracy is led to believe that some of those protesting the decision may be willing to bomb the mine to get their way, and she connects this with her prophetic visions when she realises that what she's been seeing is a cave-in. She also concludes that the hall at St Bernard's Park, where a model of the mine is on display, has been targeted for the same reasons. In reality, what she was seeing was a particularly destructive earthquake, which would have gotten a lot more people killed at the mine and at the Park if she hadn't acted on her visions.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles is up to the brim (do Deerstalkers have brims?^note Yes — one at the front to shade the eyes and one at the back to stop the rain getting down the back of your neck) with Red Herrings. They imply that The Butler Did It. He waits until everyone is in bed, and stalks about the mansion. He is also the only character that has a beard that matches the man glanced shadowing Sir Henry. Then there's the escaped convict, Selden, who has been lurking upon the moor, and the other mysterious man upon the moor, who wants to stay hidden. Most film adaptations, notably the Basil Rathbone film, like to make Dr. Mortimer seem extremely suspicious, but the book does not. There's also the looming idea that the threat might be supernatural, but none of these are the final solution.
  • A Study in Scarlet has one with the murderer writing "RACHE", which is "revenge" in German, causing people to look for a German suspect. As Sherlock points out, the A was written "after the German fashion", when an actual German would write a Latin A, so it must've been an imitator.
• With regards to Blue's identity in Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, one of the hints Simon is given is that he shares his first name with a US president. Simon initially thinks that it's Cal (as in Coolidge) or possibly Martin (as in van Buren). In reality, it's Bram, which is a shortened version of Abraham.
• In A Simple Survey, Attraction 07 exploits this for a memory game. The narrator is led by the organiser to a computer screen where they must first watch a video of various animal silhouettes, which they memorize. They're then forced to answer a series of unrelated questions meant to confuse their memories. Then the actual challenge question is revealed to not be about the silhouettes, but rather about the organiser's earring.
• In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, it's almost a given that characters will lie to achieve their own ends, so there is a lot of misinformation going around. The reader is given a slight advantage as the point-of-view switches around constantly.
  • For example, much of the main plot in the first book is driven by the murder of Jon Arryn, the previous Hand of the King (essentially, the second most powerful man in Westeros after the King). The book leads readers to believe that Cersei and Jaime Lannister are involved in the poisoning. Cersei confirms as much, as she obviously has the most to gain from his death. Jon Arryn had discovered that all three of Cersei's children were fathered by Jaime and not King Robert, and were all illegitimate heirs to the throne. The real answer is a little more complex. The third book clears things up. Jon Arryn was poisoned by his wife, Lysa, having been encouraged by Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. Lysa then sends a letter to her sister Catelyn at Winterfell that the Lannisters had poisoned Jon Arryn.
  • The first book also has the attempted murder of Bran. This plot is not completely resolved until the third book, as well. Catelyn believes that Tyrion Lannister sent the assassin and arrests him, leading to a long chain of events. The first book never quite makes it clear who sent the assassin. The dagger was believed to have been Tyrion's, who won it from a bet from Littlefinger. Littlefinger lies to Catelyn, telling her the dagger belongs to him. The third book disproves this, as the dagger had belonged to Robert Baratheon. Joffrey had overheard the king saying that it would be more merciful to kill Bran, rather than live as a cripple. Joffrey sent the footpad, armed with the king's dagger, eager for his father's attention.
  • Another plot point throughout the series is the assassination of the king Aerys II Targaryen, which marked the end of the old regime. Everyone knows that Jaime Lannister was the assassin, but multiple characters speculate on the involvement of Tywin Lannister in the assassination or lay the blame on Robert Baratheon, Eddard Stark, or other rebel leaders. When Jaime eventually gives a first-hand account of the murder, it turns out that there was no conspiracy. Jaime had grown to hate Aerys, and wanted to stop one of the king's cruel schemes. Jaime acted alone and on impulse, and the assassination had nothing to do with the political ambitions of the rebellion's leaders. Jaime had no contact with any of them.
• In Spinneret, the Rooshrike attack on the Celeritas makes them most likely to be the antagonists to the human colonists. They turn out to be great allies.
• The Stormlight Archive, second book Words of Radiance:
  • During Dalinar's visions, numbers start appearing on the wall, a countdown toward a day when something terrible happens. Dalinar assumes he did it himself and doesn't worry about it too much (the cause of it, that is—he worries plenty about the warning itself). It was actually Renarin, too scared to admit openly that he had bonded with a spren and was receiving visions of the future.
  • Shallan's Shardblade. It's implied that she got it from her father after she killed him, or perhaps somehow got a hold of it beforehand and killed him with it. Neither is true; the Blade is Pattern, her spren, and is one of the only living Blades left. She killed her mother with him when she was a child, but strangled her father with her necklace after poisoning him.
    • And then in a later book, it turns out that this was a red herring, and Shallan's then-Shardblade was a completely different spren, Testament.
• Most of Fred Vargas' novels have Red Herrings, in regards to the murderer's identity: they are generally sympathetic characters who only seem to be marginal characters. A particularly memorable example is in This Night's Foul Work, where all the Brigade is put on the track of a very plausible culprit by the real killer, Docteur Ariane Lagarde, and it takes Retancourt's attempted murder for Adamsberg to finally discover the truth.
• Thursday Next: In One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, one of the suspects in a political conspiracy is actually named Red Herring. Since the characters know they're in a work of metafiction, this leads to some strange deductions.
  "What about Red Herring, ma'am?"
  "I'm not sure. Is Red Herring a red herring? Or is it the fact that we're supposed to think Red Herring is a red herring that is actually the red herring?"
  "Or perhaps the fact that you're supposed to think Red Herring isn't a red herring makes Red Herring a red herring after all."
  "We're talking serious meta-herrings here."
• The first few chapters of Tyrannosaur Canyon set up a Last Request to deliver a dead man's treasure map to his estranged daughter. Instead, the deliveryman spends the whole story tracking down the treasure himself and trying to keep the map out of the wrong hands. The estranged daughter is addressed in the final few pages, outside the plot entirely.
• The Ultimate Alphabet is an alphabet book by Mike Wilks where the aim is to find all the objects that start with a letter in a picture. On the page for the letter X◊, there is a red fish which you might wrack your brain trying to name... but in the Annotated Ultimate Alphabet it's said to be an actual red herring.
• Universal Monsters:
  • In book 1, the core trio come to believe that Devin Chavarria's boyfriend "Slice" is Dracula, due to his vampire-like behavior. He's actually just a pawn of the real Dracula.
  • In book 3, Captain Bob comes to believe that Oscar Morales, a high school senior who's been revealed as a natural at surgery, is Herr Frankenstein's other form. Turns out he's innocent, and becomes Herr Frankenstein's backup choice as a body for his third Creature.
• The ending of the Warrior Cats book Long Shadows implies that Squirrelflight killed Ashfur, due to her showing up late with fur covered in mud (his body was found in a stream). It turns out she was just being clumsy, and by doing so she distracted the reader from the true killer, Hollyleaf.
• Welcome To Wonderland
  • In "Home Sweet Motel", P.T. and Gloria read Stanley's and Sidney's postcards from Gloria to search for clues. Part of Stanley's reads "Stanley-you think you're such a big, big man. Always smiling! Ha! If you ask me, you're all empty inside." Sidney has a part that says "if you're not afraid of hurting the big, empty-headed man.". They deduce from those lines that Sheila hid the diamonds in the Smilin' Sam statue. So, one night, they go over to it and drill some holes in one of its feet in hopes of finding the diamonds. They don't find any, and get caught by P.T.'s mom.
  • In "Beach Party Surf Monkey", P.T. and Gloria deduce that Aiden Tyler kidnapped Kevin the Monkey to get him out of the movie, and is keeping him in his suite. This deduction is backed up by Aiden ordering a lot of bunches of bananas. It turns out, however, that he ordered all those bananas because some nutrition guru told his girlfriend that she should be on a banana-only diet.
• In The Westing Game, the fact that the clues invoke the song "America the Beautiful" leads the reader (and a couple of characters) to suspect Otis Amber (i.e. Amber waves of grain). Turns out, that was just a coincidence. In fact, all the "America the Beautiful"-related clues were one giant red herring designed to mislead the characters about what the true goal of Sam Westing's game is.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • The sixth novel The Lord of Chaos introduces two new characters. One is a Forsaken named Demandred, who is a powerful channeler, can hide his identity, and betrayed the main hero's previous incarnation out of spite. Demandred is given a secret mission by The Dark One in the opening of the book. The other new character is Mazrim Taim, who is a powerful channeler with a shifty background, appears out of nowhere to offer his services to the hero, and shows no sign of the madness that male channelers who aren't aligned to Darkness suffer. When Taim first appears, the aforementioned previous incarnation goes mad in the hero's head and starts screaming about killing the Forsaken right now. Despite all this, Robert Jordan said in an interview that Taim is not Demandred in disguise, and indeed seemed somewhat surprised at the prevalence of the theory. Some fans believe this was Jossed, because there were just so many clues. The last book confirms that while Demandred recruited Taim for the Shadow, they're not and never were the same person.
  • Also, the character of Padan Fain, Ax-Crazy Humanoid Abomination of frightening powers with a grudge against both sides of the good vs. evil conflict, was generally assumed to be key to how the Last Battle would play out. In the last book he only appears briefly and, though his ultimate plan was pretty horrifying, was killed off before really accomplishing anything. Word of God indicates that this was entirely deliberate and that Fain had always been intended as a character whose role in the conclusion was minimal but that readers would be drawn heavily to speculate about.
• In the third book in The Zodiac Series, Black Moon, almost all twelve Guardians (sans Rho and the comatose Moira) are under suspicion of being an Original Guardian, The Man Behind the Man who betrayed Ophiuchus for immortality and has been manipulating most of the villains behind the scenes. Rho also suspects Supreme Advisor Untara of House Aquarius, due to her putting Ambassador Crompton in prison for one of his predictions. So who is it? Crompton himself, who is really the guardian Aquarius.
  • The series also contains another, much odder red herring. The House Aries segment in the first book introduces us to Ambassador Morscerta, who gets an odd amount of attention paid to describing him despite appearing to be a minor character. It's easy to assume he'll end up a Chekhov's Gunman...but he dies offscreen near the story's end and is replaced by the aforementioned Crompton. The "much odder" part comes in in that it turns out he really was important; he was Aquarius's prior identity before he faked his death to act as Crompton full time.
  • And yet another example in Ambassador Charon of Scorpio. For the first two books, he obstructs Rho's efforts to inform everyone about Ophiuchus, and is even explicitly noted to be bribed by the master to lie about what caused the destruction of House Cancer. But contrary to what one might think, that's as far as his role extends—after Wandering Star, he's arrested by his House and vanishes from the narrative.

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