Red Herrings

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Red Herrings
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By definition

• A red herring is a phrase given to any attempt to
  send someone off on the wrong direction as they
  pursue some item of information. So, if you think
  about literary examples of red herrings,
  detective fiction is going to be full of red
  herrings, because a good author will deliberately
  make you think that the murderer is someone else
  from who it actually is.

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A little background

• The use of the term "red herring" has its history
  from the 1800s as a smoked "red herring" was
  dragged across a game trail to throw hunting dogs
  off the scent.
• Only the best hunting dogs were able to discern
  the differences and continue to pursue the game.
• The phrase "red herring" came into popular use in
  literature with detective stories, crime novels
  etc...as it was a trick used by a villian to
  throw the cops off the chase.

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What is a red herring?

• The books of Agatha Christie often use a red
  herring to detract the reader from the actual
  offender. For example, in Cat Among the Pigeons,
  two similar crimes lead the reader to believe a
  particular character is a killer, but it turns
  out that the two murders in the book are
  unrelated, and so the character is actually free
  of blame. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the
  reader is led to believe that the two main
  characters hate each other, but this turns out to
  be a way for them to hide the fact that they
  conspired to kill somebody.
• Sherlock Holmes stories often use a red herring
  as a central part of the plot, and so does Edgar
  Allan Poe in many of his short stories.

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• In films, a red herring can often be found in
  Alfred Hitchcock stories, where characters and
  things turn out to be anything but what the
  viewer expects them to be.
• One of the best examples of the use of a red
  herring in contemporary film can be found in the
  movie Saw. During the whole film, two characters
  spend time imprisoned in a room in which a third
  character lies dead. Throughout the film, both
  characters appear to be guilty of a series of
  murders, until is discovered at the end that the
  third person in the room is not actually dead. He
  is, in fact, the killer.