Five Red Herrings

By Simon Winchester

Painting can be a dangerous pastime.
 
When a famous artist is found dead, and a painting done in his style used to stage the death as accidental, Lord Peter Wimsey must solve a murder with exactly six suspects – six local artists talented enough to have painted the fake, and with motive to kill the painter. Five of them are Red Herrings, but one is a murderer.
 
Initially published as Suspicious Characters in the United States.
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9780771060434

Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.

Reviews for Five Red Herrings

[hopeevey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Yes, you can make an excellent case that the plot of this book is an extended work problem. However, with such lovely writing, and rich characterization, I very much enjoyed this book. Having rather a crush on both Lord Peter and Bunter doesn't keep me from recognizing flaws... but does incline me to forgive them :)

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Re-read time. This is one of those mysteries that revolves around timings. How long does it take to paint a picture, how long does it take to cycle from A to B etc. Lots of train timetables and tickets to explore. An awful lot of bicycles to lose, find, ride, borrow and send by train to London. Strikes me as a bit of an exercise, to some extent, showing she could do it, as it's quite unlike anything else in the series from that perspective. Wimsey is holidaying in Scotland, in a artistic & fishing community. Not entirely clear why he is there and it does leave Bunter a bit out in the cold. He is nothing like as present as in other books. The death is an unpopular painter who has seemingly argued with everyone. Early on,a list is made of 6 painters who could have done the deed, 5 of which are the red herrings of the title. In the conclusion, they are each advanced by one of those involved in the investigation, before Wimsey sets out to show who it was by means of a reconstruction. It's a neat little device, as each snippet of information gets tidied up, and each apparent impossibility shown to be viable. It's an interesting exercise, if not typical of the series.

[jeffreymarks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's Peter Wimsey, so it rates at least 4 stars, but the Scottish accents were so thick that I had trouble reading in places. Still a good book with a well-plotted mystery at its heart.

[veracite · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I cannot put enough emphasis on my recommendation NOT TO READ THIS BOOK. All the dialogue is written 'phonetically' to help you get a real sense of the Scots accent and the plot revolves around British country train timetables! Two boring things that are very boring together. Actually, Wodehouse and Christie can make an amusing thing out of a train timetable but Sayers, not so much.

Here's a jolly example of the accentising:

The mon was deid before he got intae the burn. 'Twas the scart on the heid that did it.

Two hundred and eighty-four pages of it.

[jeremypreacher · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very much enjoyed the setting and the layers of mysteries. As usual I felt it bogged down a little in the middle, but this was overall one of the better Wimsey mysteries, I thought.

[aliceunderskies · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

By far the weakest of the otherwise uniformly delightful Wimsey mysteries. This one was overlong and underexciting, with too little of Lord Peter Himself, barely any Bunter or Parker, and nothing at all of my favourites, Harriet and Miss Climpson. If the tragic paucity of everyone good weren't bad enough, half of the dialogue is presented in brogue. I hate and despise written-out accents and dialect in any form but tiny doses or great importance to the plot. I've got zero interest in puzzling my way through incomprehensible sentences, tortuously misspelled to give a sense of "setting" or something--it's definitely a situation where I'd rather be told than shown. A very disappointing misstep.

[kimmr_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There were plenty of things about this book that I loved: Lord Peter lapsing into blank verse, the accents of the various characters as re-created by the audiobook narrator, the setting, the re-enactment of the crime. However, I was frequently lost in the timetable discussions and I found it very difficult to keep the names and the characteristics (not to mention the alibis!) of the various suspects in my head. As it was an audiobook, there was no easy flipping back a few pages to work things out. Suffice to say, this is not my favourite Sayers. But even Sayers at less than her most brilliant is a lot better than countless others!

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eh. It's a Lord Peter, so it's not terrible, but it really doesn't catch me. Most of it is very dry - timetables and theories - and Peter never quite hits his stride for me (and Bunter only gets one scene, and that one kind of after the fact). The fact that a clue is explicitly withheld from the readers near the beginning is _very_ annoying - Peter finds (or rather, doesn't find) something, and the author explicitly says she's not telling us what it was, we have to deduce it. In fact, I remembered what was missing, though not who had it. Then everybody is scattered all over the map, and half of them are lying (mostly badly). The various detectives come up with assorted theories for what happened, each matching most of the data they have - but they keep getting demolished by inconvenient facts. And Peter is very smug about having the solution - instead of telling them his idea, he proposes a reenactment to prove he's got it right. That's almost exciting - but then we get distracted by seeing the 'villain' as a person and it ends a little flat. Though if Gowan had to testify in court, there was a bit of drama and intense embarrassment that didn't even get mentioned. Maybe it grew back before he had to speak - though the jury's reaction says to me you could still see what happened. Overall - not terrible, but I'm not particularly interested in rereading it.

[ds_61_12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Murder in Scotland. Six suspects, all artists, all with a dodgy alibi. It is up to Lord Peter Wimsey to solve the crime.Keeps you on your toes. Very ingenous.

[amy_marie26 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ugh. I picked this up because I needed a break from The Singapore Grip and its endless discussions of markets and rubber plantations. I love Lord Peter Wimsy, but there were WAY too many bicycles and train timetables involved and too much indecipherable Scottish dialogue. The chapter where each of the police officers elaborate their theories of the crime was painful. And that ending! What!? Just no.

[margaretpinardauthor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Library copy, alas! This was a triumph of wit and suspense and humor and setting and accent and period- just a delicious bite into the Sayers apple. Can't wait to read her others!

[pgchuis · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I gave up on this about half way through. There was so much about trains to Ayr and trains to Euston and pages of infinitesimally detailed discussion of train time tables and boats to Ireland and bicycles with different tyres and it was just very very uninteresting and impossible to follow. The characters were hard to differentiate - there was a Scottish inspector, sergeant and constable and in my mind they were completely interchangeable. I could only keep the suspects straight by referring back to the first chapter. Also, the rendering of Scottish dialect was distracting: what on earth is "imph'm" meant to indicate? I found it difficult to understand why Whimsey was there at all and Bunter seemed completely out of place. Very disappointing.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lord Peter in Scotland. I like it. Very different from the others. Some people don't like this variation of the Lord Peter mysteries, but I enjoyed the glimpse of Scotland and artists. It was written to honor her friends in Scotland. The reason it is not on my shelf, is because it got spilled on on my trip, and I need to get a new one.

[amphipodgirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

My least favorite Lord Peter Wimsey novel.

[booksandscones · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the artists' community of Kirkcudbright, Scotland, quarrelsome landscape painter Sandy Campbell has managed to enrage most of his fellow-painters with his foul-mouthed, belligerent ways. On a Monday night, he has been on a booze-fuelled rampage, picking fights and looking for trouble. On Tuesday afternoon, he is found head-down in a stream with his painting gear and a half-finished canvas on the bank. At first it appears to be an accident, but because of a certain critical missing article, Lord Peter Wimsey deduces that it is murder. There are at least six suspects - five are red herrings and one is the killer.The alibis all hinge on times reported by witnesses (who may be truthful, mistaken, or lying) and the distance between towns and the timetables of trains. There is a lot of "Could he have gotten from here to there by 11.18 on a bicycle?" or "The 8.20 at Girvan is only on Sunday. On Tuesday, it doesn't get in till 8.35." Some readers didn't like this plot device and found it boring, but I enjoyed it very much. The Scottish vernacular is hilarious. Lord Peter's reconstruction of the crime and how the murderer faked his alibi is superb. A wonderful classic mystery by Sayers; one of my favourites.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Competently done, but not my favorite Wimsey novel. Setting in a community of painters in Galloway in Scotland is perhaps the most interesting aspect. It seems to have been Sayers' demonstration that she could do the "railway timetable alibi mystery" subgenre which was popular at the time.

[foggidawn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is not one of my favorite Lord Peter Wimsey books, though the complicated plot and over-abundant Scots dialect make it one of the most memorable ones. Lord Peter retreats to the picturesque Scottish countryside and, of course, there is a murder. Campbell, a hot-tempered artist, is found at the bottom of a cliff, but his death was no accident. Any of six other local artists could have committed the crime, but only one of them did.I'll admit, this one was a bit of a slog for me. Reading before bed, it was all too easy to drift off to sleep when the police started discussing train time-tables. There were far too many trains, towns, bicycles, and suspects, and they were far too difficult to tell apart. Wimsey doesn't shine as much in this one as in previous books, and after all of the character work in Strong Poison, this detached and relatively unemotional Lord Peter is a bit of a let-down. Still, it's Lord Peter, so worth a read!

[chrissterry_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

By far my least favourite Lord Peter Wimsey novel. The plot was over complex, the various artists, all addressed by surname, had names which were too similar, and I could not abide the faux Scots dialogue.

[katekf_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a charming Peter Wimsey novel in which he helps the local investigators of Kirkcudbright in Scotland to understand what happened to the artist Campbell. The majority of the book follows the various detective amongst numerous leads about timetables and bicycles and artists all over Scotland. It is not the strongest Wimsey but it has the nice addition of seeing other types of investigation and how Wimsey can work within a team. The community of artists and townspeople that Sayers creates is charming and I personally would happily spend a week in Kirkcudbright.

[benbennetts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like "Gaudy Night", this stands out among Sayers' oeuvre, above all for the astonishingly powerful evocation of setting. I read a review once which described this as arguably one of the four greatest novels of the twentieth century. I can understand where the reviewer was coming from.

[sarahehwilson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think this is the weakest of all of DLS's mysteries. It is carefully emotion-free (an observation Peter makes to Harriet about her earlier mysteries in "Gaudy Night"), mechanically brilliant but somehow detached. Interesting how it came right after "Strong Poison"; I wonder if DLS panicked a bit about where her characters wanted to go and needed to isolate Peter way up in Scotland so she wouldn't have to deal with his lovelorn heart.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I first read this book in my early teens, soon after going on a school camping trip to Galloway where this book is set, so I have always had a soft spot for this Lord Peter Wimsey mystery.

[benfulton · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A terrific instance of the murderer who makes an insanely complicated alibi for himself only to be caught out by the hero. So good it's to the point where the book is more or less a parody of the genre. Some of Agatha Christie's stuff have the murderers preplanning alibis even more complicated, but since she invented the type I guess they don't really count as parodies.

[crowyhead · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As always, Sayers has conceived a witty, twisty mystery. In this case, a surly artist is murdered, and there are six suspects who have a motive and equally poor alibis. Five of them are red herrings, and one is the real murderer. Will Lord Peter get to the bottom of the mystery? Well, of course he will. The only thing I didn't really like about this in terms of the mystery is that Sayers very blatantly witholds an important clue, which makes the book a fun puzzle but does cause problems for the suspension of disbelief. Plus it annoys me when I, as the reader, don't have the benefit of all of the clues that the fictional detective has. Still, this was entertaining enough to rate 4/5, nonetheless.

[janesteen_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Where I got the book: purchased (used) on Amazon. Continuing my Lord Peter Wimsey re-read.Ah, the Wimsey book I never liked. I like it better now, but I still think it lacks something of the other books. Wimsey is in Scotland, presumably getting away from it all (it, by now, meaning Harriet Vane, who was in the last book). Somewhat incongruously, he is hanging out in a artists' community, when one of the painters, an argumentative bugger called Campbell, is found dead. And Wimsey immediately knows he's murdered, because of a detail that you really have to have read the book once before to understand - foreknowledge makes the whole of the book much clearer. I always kind of resented Sayers for not giving the reader that clue early on, because after all isn't the whole point of a classic murder mystery that the reader has ALL the facts presented to them?So we end up with six suspects, all painters, and the novel goes into excruciating detail examining the movements and motives of each of them. Railway timetables and other kinds of timetable are much in evidence, making this a hard read. In addition many of the characters speak in broad Scots, and peersonally ah'm no verra guid at followin' sich a mess o' dialogue, ye ken. Worse, we even have one witness who talkth like thith - I think Sayers is indicating here that the gentleman is Jewish, as she was cheerfully bigoted after the manner of her generation.And yet if you have the patience to wade through the Scots and the timetables and all the business about bicycles, it's a very clever mystery. Although Wimsey solves it NOT on the strength of all the miles and miles of careful reconstruction of the crime but on the strength of the aforementioned unspoken clue, which means that basically the entire middle 4/5 of the book is a RED HERRING, so yeesh.For Wimsey devotees there are also some nice little character touches, foreshadowing the deepening of character that was to come in the other Wimsey/Vane books. So for me it was fun to encounter what almost came across as new information. And, of course, cleverly written, although the older I get the more I notice the instability of POV that haunts the books. But, you see, DLS had the trick of making us into drooling Wimsey fans, showing the power of a damn good character to make up for any amount of technical faults.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the full cast audio version of this Sayers classic with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter. The mystery centers on the murder of an artist in a Scottish town. Another artist must have committed the murder. Train tables receive quite a bit of attention. Many people criticize these, but I'm not familiar enough with them to do so. In the end each investigator comes up with his own theory, but Lord Peter, of course, solves the problem.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

2020 reread via audiobook narrated by Patrick Malahide:I missed Ian Carmichael's narration but Malahide did a great job with the Scots accents.

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was delighted with the community of artists and the Scottish throughout, though it was more of a strange intellectual puzzle than a satisfying mystery.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lord Peter Wimsey is vacationing in a small Scottish village notable as a haven for artists and fishermen. When one particularly obnoxious artist is found dead at the bottom of a cliff, it looks like a tragic accident. If Wimsey hadn’t been on the scene, that’s what everyone would have continued to think. When Wimsey inspects the scene of the death, he realizes that there is something missing that should be there. Its absence leads Wimsey to conclude that a murder had been committed, and that the murderer was an artist. The field is narrowed to six suspects. Five of them are red herrings, while the sixth is the murderer.The murder is so cleverly plotted that I found it too clever for me. One of the things I love about mysteries is watching for clues that point to the solution. I didn’t know enough about either art or fishing to be able to do that with this book. It was a bit long as well. I think I might have enjoyed Three Red Herrings more if it resulted in a shorter book!

[cpg_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sayers distributes clues with a fire hose and fails to develop characters sufficiently to enable one to keep straight which suspect is which.