Agatha Christie- Red Herrings

Agatha Christie, although a writer, is a great example of how to use red herrings. This is because she used many red herrings as her device in her writing to mislead and confuse her readers. For a reader of Agatha Christies you have to work out the clues that she gives in her books, however it is hard to work out what are clues or what are just red herrings, sending you down the wrong path. Agatha Christie’s red herrings are sometimes linked to unrelated minor crimes, which the reader is lead to believe might be connected to the murder but later the reader is surprised to find out that they have come to the wrong conclusion. Christie uses red herrings to frame her characters so that you believe that they are the murderers, however it is often the least likely and unsuspected character that is the true criminal but they go unnoticed by the reader as they are mislead by the use of the red herring. Although Agatha Christie is a writer and not a film director we chose to look at her as she is a true master at successfully tricking and confusing her readers which is a the key aspect to the use of a red herring, which we would like to create in our own thriller film and looking at her work gives us an insight into what we must do to successfully use this plot device.