Twelve Red Herrings

Last updated
Twelve Red Herrings
TwelveRedHerrings.jpg
First edition (UK)
Author Jeffrey Archer
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date
July 1994
Pages324
ISBN 0-00-224329-6

Twelve Red Herrings (or 12 Red Herrings) is a 1994 short story collection by British writer and politician Jeffrey Archer. Archer challenges his readers to find "twelve red herrings", one in each story. The book reached #3 in the Canadian best-sellers (fiction) list. [1] J. K. Sweeney from Magill Book Reviews (01/01/1995) reviews the stories as "An attempt, it must be said, which is of such a nature that quite often the author succeeds in the effort." [2]

Contents

For the story "One Man's Meat..." the reader is offered the choice of four different endings: "Rare", "Burnt", "Overdone" and "À Point". Sweeney from Magill Book Reviews comments on this: "Each of the conclusions is quite plausible, although the average reader may find one far more convincing that the others--a circumstance which the author no doubt anticipated with a certain degree of relish." [2]

Contents

The book contains 12 stories.

In the preface the author notes that the stories indicated with an asterisk are "based on known incidents (some of them embellished with considerable licence)."

See also

Related Research Articles

Jeffrey Archer English author and former politician (born 1940)

Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare is an English novelist, life peer and former politician. Before becoming an author, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–1974), but did not seek re-election after a financial scandal that left him almost bankrupt. He revived his fortunes as a best-selling novelist; his books have sold more than 320 million copies worldwide.

Paul J. McAuley British botanist and science fiction author (born 1955)

Paul J. McAuley is a British botanist and science fiction author. A biologist by training, McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction. His novels dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternative history/alternative reality, and space travel.

Jeffrey Eugenides Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). The Virgin Suicides served as the basis of a feature film, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis.

Raymond Benson

Raymond Benson is an American author best known for being the author of the James Bond novels from 1997 to 2003. Benson was born in Midland, Texas and graduated from Permian High School in Odessa in 1973. In primary school Benson took an interest in the piano which would later in his life develop into an interest in composing music, mostly for theatrical productions. Benson also took part in drama at school and became the vice president of his high school's drama department, an interest that he would later pursue by directing stage productions in New York City after attending and receiving a degree in Drama Production—Directing from the University of Texas at Austin. Other hobbies include film history and criticism, writing, and designing computer games.

Joanna Trollope British writer (b. 1943)

Joanna Trollope is an English writer. She has also written under the pseudonym of Caroline Harvey. Her novel Parson Harding's Daughter won in 1980 the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Ross Macdonald American writer

Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym that was used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction.

Terry Bisson

Terry Ballantine Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He is best known for his short stories, including "Bears Discover Fire", which won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and "They're Made Out of Meat".

Homo unius libri is a Latin phrase attributed to Thomas Aquinas in a literary tradition going back to at least the 17th century, bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) being the earliest known writer in English to have done so. Saint Thomas Aquinas is reputed to have employed the phrase "hominem unius libri timeo".

Adam Stemple Musical artist

Adam Stemple is a Celtic-influenced American folk rock musician, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is also the author of several fantasy short stories and novels, including two series of novels co-written with his mother, writer Jane Yolen.

<i>The Murder at the Vicarage</i> 1930 Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie

The Murder at the Vicarage is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1930 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.

Red herring Fallacious approach developed as a diversion to mislead the audience

A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentionally, as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies, or may be used in argumentation inadvertently.

Stephen Dixon (author) American author (1936-2019)

Stephen Dixon was an American author of novels and short stories.

<i>Cat ONine Tales</i> Short story collection by Jeffrey Archer

Cat O'Nine Tales is British author Jeffrey Archer's fifth collection of short stories. It was published in 2006, and nine of the twelve stories are based on tales Archer heard while in prison. The other three stories are also based on true events but are not derived from prison.

<i>A Twist in the Tale</i> (short story collection) Book by Jeffrey Archer

A Twist in the Tale is a 1988 collection of short stories by British author and politician Jeffrey Archer. The collection contains 12 stories, which are listed below.

Philip Graham is an American author, professor, and editor. He is one of the founders, and the current editor-at-large, of the literary/arts journal, Ninth Letter, which won the MLA’s Best New Literary Journal Award in 2005. He is a professor emeritus in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received three campus-wide teaching awards. He has also taught in the low-residency MFA program of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Additionally, he is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, two Illinois Arts Council grants, and the William Peden Prize in Fiction from The Missouri Review, as well as fellowship residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo artists' colony.

<i>And Thereby Hangs a Tale</i> Short story collection by Jeffrey Archer

And Thereby Hangs a Tale (ISBN 9780230531451) is British author Jeffrey Archer's sixth collection of short stories. It was published in 2010, and ten of the fifteen stories are based on tales Archer gathered on travels over the previous six years or so. The other five stories are claimed to derive from his own imagination.

John Stewart Wynne is an American author of novels, short stories and poetry, as well as a Grammy-nominated producer of spoken word recordings.

<i>The Weird</i>

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an anthology of weird fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

<i>The Kills</i> (novel)

The Kills is a novel by Richard House, published in 2013.

<i>This Was a Man</i> (Jeffrey Archer) 2016 novel by Jeffrey Archer

This Was a Man is the seventh and final novel in Jeffrey Archer's Clifton Chronicles. This series follows the events of the fictitious Clifton and Barrington families, starting in the 1920s and ending in 1992.

References

  1. "Fit for a magnate". Maclean's. 107 (29): 6. July 1994.
  2. 1 2 Sweeney, J. K. (January 1995). "TWELVE RED HERRINGS Jeffrey Archer 1994 Short Stories". Magill Book Reviews.