 First edition | |
| Author | Dorothy L. Sayers |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Lord Peter Wimsey |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz Ltd [1] |
Publication date | 1931 [1] |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 351 [1] |
| 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. [2]
The novel is set in Galloway, a part of Scotland popular with artists and 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 herrings.
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. 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, the 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. 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".
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 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."
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". [3]
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 chefs d'oeuvre from her hand." [4]
The Five Red Herrings was adapted for television in 1975 as part of a series starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter and Glyn Houston as Bunter. [5] It has also been dramatised for BBC Radio with Carmichael as Lord Peter and Peter Jones as Bunter. [6]
Gaudy Night (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.
Murder Must Advertise is a 1933 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the eighth in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Most of the action of the novel takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was familiar as she had herself worked as an advertising copywriter until 1931.
Kirkcudbright is a county town, parish and royal burgh from 1455 in Kirkcudbrightshire, within Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, southwest of Castle Douglas and Dalbeattie at the mouth of the River Dee, around four miles from the Irish Sea.
Whose Body? is a 1923 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers first published in the UK by T. Fisher Unwin and in the US by Boni & Liveright. It was her debut novel, and the book in which she introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey. Clouds of Witness (1926) would be the next novel in which the character reappears.
Clouds of Witness is a 1926 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the second in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In the United States the novel was first published in 1927 under the title Clouds of Witnesses.
Unnatural Death is a 1927 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her third featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It was published under the title The Dawson Pedigree in the United States in 1928.
Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears.
Have His Carcase is a 1932 locked-room mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the second in which Harriet Vane appears. It is also included in the 1987 BBC TV series. The book marks a stage in the long drawn out courting of Harriet Vane by Wimsey. Though working closely with him on solving the book's mystery, she still refuses to marry him.
The Nine Tailors is a 1934 mystery novel by the British writer Dorothy L. Sayers, her ninth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The story is set in the Lincolnshire Fens, and revolves around a group of bell-ringers at the local parish church. The book has been described as Sayers' finest literary achievement, although not all critics were convinced by the mode of death, nor by the amount of technical campanology detail included.
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane.
Lord Peter Views the Body, first published in 1928, is the first collection of short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers. All twelve stories were included in later complete collections.
The Case of the Constant Suicides, first published in 1941, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr. Like much of Dickson Carr's work, this novel is a locked room mystery, in addition to being a whodunnit. Unlike most of the other Dr. Fell novels, this story has a high humour level, reminiscent of the Henry Merrivale works.
Mervyn Bunter is a fictional character in Dorothy L. Sayers's novels and short stories. He serves as Lord Peter Wimsey's valet, and served as Wimsey's batman during the First World War. Bunter was partially based on the fictional butler Jeeves, created by P. G. Wodehouse.
A Catalogue of Crime is a critique of crime fiction by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, first published in 1971. The book was awarded a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1972. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1989. Barzun and Taylor both graduated in the class of 1924 from Harrisburg Technical High School.
The Silent Passenger is a British black-and-white mystery film produced in 1935 at Ealing Studios, London. It is based on an original story written by Dorothy L. Sayers specifically for the screen. Her amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, was portrayed as a somewhat eccentric comical aristocrat who solved murders. As of 2014, the film is available on DVD.
Sergeant/Inspector/Chief Inspector Charles Parker is a fictional police detective who appears in several Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, and later becomes Lord Peter's brother-in-law.
Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of full cast BBC Radio drama adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1973 and 1983, with a further adaptation of Gaudy Night mounted for BBC Audiobooks in 2005 to complete the full sequence of Sayers' novels, all starring Ian Carmichael in the title role.
Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of television serial adaptations of five Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers, starring Ian Carmichael as Wimsey. They were broadcast on BBC1 between 1972 and 1975, beginning with Clouds of Witness in April 1972.
The Two Tickets Puzzle is a 1930 detective novel by the British author Alfred Walter Stewart, published under his pseudonym J.J. Connington. It was the second and last book featuring Superintendent Ross, an attempt to replace the author's better-known series character Sir Clinton Driffield who returned in Connington's next novel The Boathouse Riddle. With its story of a police detective trying to break down an alibi using railway timetables, it resembled the style of Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French series. Dorothy L. Sayers used a similar plot for her 1931 novel Five Red Herrings, and references Connington's novel in the dialogue.