What does a mystery writer’s favorite trick have to do with horses, hounds, and the hunting field? More than you might imagine.
As many of you know, I am both a writer and a rider.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a variety of equestrian pursuits, including showing, driving, hunting, and more, in various corners of the world. My writing endeavors have taken me down an equally winding path, eventually leading me to one of my most beloved fictional genres: the mystery novel.
It was only recently that I discovered a rather wonderful connection between these two seemingly unrelated passions.
The Serendipity of Synchronicity
I consider the experience of stumbling upon obscure, seemingly disparate subjects or circumstances related to one’s passions to be one of life’s great pleasures.
Whether grand or infinitesimal, those little “ah-ha!” moments are meant to be savored.
And this one began on a gentle spring afternoon.
I was sitting in the sweet country air, letting the breeze softly ruffle my hair and the sun kiss my cheeks, while doing my very best to ignore the nagging notion that I ought to be doing something productive.
Eventually, the nagging notion won.
In search of some enterprise that might produce something positive without requiring me to expend too much energy, I turned to Spotify and a podcast, something to inform as well as entertain.
An elegant solution!
And just up my alley.
The Art of Mystery Writing
I chose a podcast devoted to the fine art of writing the mystery novel. That particular episode concerned one of the mystery writer’s most useful devices: the red herring.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a red herring is something intended to divert attention from the real matter at hand. In a mystery, it is that deliciously misleading clue that sends the unsuspecting sleuth, or reader, merrily off in the wrong direction.
I lace my own mysteries with delicious red herrings.
There is something immensely satisfying about challenging readers to identify the misleading clues, put them firmly on the back burner, and continue in hot pursuit of the guilty culprit.
True, I wish to divert the reader.
But never unfairly.
A good mystery writer plays fair.
The mystery writer lays the clues. The reader decides which trail to follow.
So imagine my delight when the hosts turned to the history of the expression itself.
Of Horses, Hounds, and Herrings
Long before the red herring found its way into the mystery novel, its story became entangled with hounds, scent, and the hunting field.
A “red herring” is not a particular species of fish at all.
The name was historically given to a herring preserved by salting and smoking, a process that darkens the fish to a reddish or deep brown color and gives it a remarkably strong smell.
And therein lies the tale.
Accounts connecting pungent red herrings with hunting dogs go back centuries. Their powerful scent was said to be capable of drawing hounds away from another trail, and references to red herrings and false scents eventually became fertile ground for metaphor.
By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, writers were using the image of following a red-herring scent to describe being led away from the matter actually at hand.
And what began with a very smelly fish, a scent, and a pack of hounds eventually became the perfect expression for one of the mystery writer’s favorite tricks.
There it was.
The mystery novel and the hunting field, meeting quite unexpectedly over a herring.
Precisely the sort of synchronicity I adore.
The Game Is Afoot!
Perhaps that is why the red herring remains such an irresistible device.
The mystery writer lays a scent.
The reader picks it up.
And away we go, following the trail, certain that we are closing in on our quarry, until we discover that we have been galloping enthusiastically in entirely the wrong direction.
Writer and rider. Two pursuits with rather more in common than one might expect.
As both a writer and a rider, I find that rather delightful.
Perhaps the next time you encounter a particularly convincing red herring in a mystery, you’ll picture not only the clever author behind it, but a pack of hounds, noses to the ground, charging determinedly after the wrong scent.
Which leaves only one question:
Can you spot the red herrings hiding in my Ivy Snow mysteries before Ivy does?
Happy sleuthing,
The Barngoddess
Three mysteries. Plenty of suspects. And more than a few red herrings.
About Janet Winters
Janet Winters is the writer and rider behind The Barngoddess Chronicles, where a lifelong passion for horses meets history, travel, culture, country life, and the occasional mystery. An equestrian whose pursuits have taken her from the show ring to the hunting field, she is also the author of the Ivy Snow Mystery Series.