Editing The Five Red Herrings

{{Short description|1931 mystery novel by Dorothy L Sayers}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2024}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2024}}
{{infobox book
| name          = The Five Red Herrings
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         = Image:Red herrings.JPG
| caption       = First edition
| author        = [[Dorothy L. Sayers]]
| cover_artist  =
| country       = United Kingdom
| language      = English
| series        = [[Lord Peter Wimsey]]
| genre         = [[Mystery novel]]
| publisher     = [[Victor Gollancz Ltd]]<ref name="BL catalogue">{{Cite web |url=http://primocat.bl.uk/F?func=direct&local_base=ITEMV&doc_number=003263668&con_lng=eng |title=British Library Item details |website=primocat.bl.uk |access-date=2018-01-05}}</ref>
| release_date  = 1931<ref name="BL catalogue"/>
| media_type    = Print
| pages         = 351<ref name="BL catalogue"/>
| preceded_by   = [[Strong Poison]]
| followed_by   = [[Have His Carcase]]
}}

'''''The Five Red Herrings''''' (also '''''The 5 Red Herrings''''') is a 1931 novel by [[Dorothy L. Sayers]], her sixth featuring [[Lord Peter Wimsey]]. In the United States it was published in the same year under the title ''Suspicious Characters''.<ref name="LOCcat">{{Cite web |url=https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=10591&recCount=25&recPointer=4&bibId=9219734 |title=Suspicious characters, the new Lord Peter mystery |website=Library of Congress online catalog |access-date=2018-01-05}}</ref>

==Plot==
[[File:Five Red Herrings - sketch map.svg|thumb|upright=1.2|Significant locations in the novel – a sketch map.]]
The novel is set in [[Galloway]], a part of [[Scotland]] popular with artists and [[Recreational fishing|recreational fishermen]]. Sandy Campbell is a talented painter, but also a notoriously quarrelsome drunkard. When he is found dead in a stream, with a still-wet half-finished painting on the bank above, it is assumed that he fell in accidentally, fracturing his skull. [[Lord Peter Wimsey]], who is in the region on a fishing holiday, suspects murder when he realises that something is missing from the scene which makes it likely that another artist painted the picture. Sayers includes a parenthetical note at this point: "Here Lord Peter Wimsey told the Sergeant what he was looking for and why, but as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page." A local doctor believes that the degree of [[rigor mortis]] suggests that Campbell died during the previous night.

Whoever killed Campbell also executed the painting in Campbell's distinctive style, to contrive the appearance of an accident. Six talented artists in the area have had recent public brawls with Campbell: Farren, Strachan, Gowan, Graham, Waters, and Ferguson. One of the six is the criminal, and five are [[red herring]]s.

All the suspects behave suspiciously: some leave the district without explanation, others give obviously inaccurate statements or conceal facts. Wimsey investigates, with some assistance from his friend in London, [[Charles Parker (detective)|Charles Parker]]. The task of identifying the culprit is made more difficult because of the complexities of the local train timetables, the easy availability of bicycles, and the resultant opportunities for the murderer to evade notice.

All six suspects are eventually traced and give statements in which they deny killing Campbell, but none are entirely satisfactory. The [[Procurator fiscal|Procurator Fiscal]], the [[Chief constable|Chief Constable]] and the investigating police officers meet with Wimsey to review the evidence. The police put forward several theories, implicating all of the suspects either as killer or as [[Accessory (legal term)|accessory]]. Asked for his opinion, Wimsey finally reveals that the true killer was in fact Ferguson, the only one of the artists who while painting often kept spare tubes of paint in his pocket. Ferguson had absentmindedly pocketed a tube of white while creating the faked painting; it was the absence of that tube that Wimsey had noted at the start. The police are sceptical, but Wimsey offers a reconstruction, and over the course of twenty-four hours demonstrates how the killer contrived the scene above the stream and also established a false alibi.

Ferguson confesses, but states that Campbell's death happened accidentally during a fight, and was not murder. When the case is tried, the jury brings in a verdict of [[manslaughter]], with a strong recommendation to mercy on the ground that "Campbell was undoubtedly looking for trouble".

==Principal characters==
* [[Lord Peter Wimsey]]
* [[Mervyn Bunter]]: Wimsey's manservant
* Sandy Campbell (deceased): artist
* Hugh Farren: artist and suspect; Gilda Farren: his wife
* Henry Strachan: golf club secretary, artist and suspect
* Matthew Gowan: wealthy artist and suspect
* Jock Graham: artist and suspect
* Michael Waters: English artist and suspect
* John Ferguson: Campbell's next-door neighbour, artist and suspect
* Sir Maxwell Jamieson: Chief Constable
* Inspector Macpherson: [[Kirkcudbright]] Police
* Sergeant Dalziel: [[Newton Stewart]] Police

==Foreword==
The novel includes a foreword in the form of a personal letter from the author "To my friend Joe Dignam, kindliest of landlords". The letter starts: "Here at last is your book about [[Gatehouse of Fleet|Gatehouse]] and [[Kirkcudbright]]. All the places are real places and all the trains are real trains, and all the landscapes are correct, except that I have run up a few new houses here and there."

==Literary significance and criticism==
The first edition was reviewed in ''[[The Spectator]]'' of 1931 by M. I. Cole, who found the rather indistinguishable artist suspects, and the elaborate examination of timetables, ticket punches and so on, to be really taxing to the intelligence. He noted that Lord Peter Wimsey and the author's usual pleasant fantasies have retired into the background leaving a "pure-puzzle" book which is disappointing, dry, and dull. He acknowledged, however, that it has been appreciated immensely by puzzle fanatics who possess "the type of mind that goes on solving crossword puzzles for ever and ever".<ref name="Spectator">{{Cite magazine |last=Cole |first=M. I. |date=9 May 1931 |title=Fiction: The Puzzle of the Puzzle |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/page/9th-may-1931/24 |magazine=[[The Spectator]] |access-date=2018-01-05}}</ref>

In ''[[A Catalogue of Crime]]'' (revised edn 1989), [[Jacques Barzun]] and Wendell Hertig Taylor called ''The Five Red Herrings'' "A work that grows on rereading and remains in the mind as one of the richest, most colorful of her group studies. The Scottish setting, the artists in the colony, the train-ticket puzzle, and the final chase place this triumph among the four or five ''[[Masterpiece|chefs d'oeuvre]]'' from her hand."<ref name="COFC">Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig.  ''A Catalogue of Crime''. New York: Harper & Row. 1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989. {{ISBN|0-06-015796-8}}</ref>

==Adaptations==
''The Five Red Herrings'' was [[Lord Peter Wimsey (TV series)|adapted for television in 1975]] as part of a series starring [[Ian Carmichael]] as Lord Peter and [[Glyn Houston]] as Bunter.<ref name="cult-tv">{{Cite web |url=http://cult-tv-lounge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/lord-peter-wimsey-five-red-herrings-1975.html |title=Lord Peter Wimsey – Five Red Herrings (1975)  |date=12 January 2016 |website=Cult TV Lounge |access-date=2018-01-05}}</ref> It has also been [[Lord Peter Wimsey (radio series)|dramatised]] for [[BBC Radio]] with Carmichael as Lord Peter and [[Peter Jones (actor)|Peter Jones]] as Bunter.<ref name="BBC Radio">{{Cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jw7f |title=Wimsey: Five Red Herrings. Episode 1: The Body in the Burn |website=BBC |access-date=2018-01-05}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* {{FadedPage|id=20131206|name=The Five Red Herrings [Suspicious Characters<nowiki>]</nowiki>}}
* [http://www.gatehouse-of-fleet.co.uk/index.php/10-visitors/history/59-doroth-l-sayers-in-galloway Dorothy L Sayers in Galloway, the scene of ''Five Red Herrings'']

{{Lord Peter Wimsey}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Five Red Herrings, The}}
[[Category:1931 British novels]]
[[Category:Novels by Dorothy L. Sayers]]
[[Category:Novels set in Dumfries and Galloway]]
[[Category:Novels about artists]]
[[Category:Victor Gollancz Ltd books]]
[[Category:British mystery novels]]
[[Category:Novels set in the 1930s]]
[[Category:British novels adapted into television shows]]
[[Category:Lord Peter Wimsey novels]]