Agatha Christie's Ten Worst Red Herrings

Añadido: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Hello again, fellow mystery files.

[00:00:02]Today, we have the companion video to last week's where now I will be discussing the worst red herrings in Agatha Christie novels. And I think this is probably the more interesting video.

[00:00:13]I know this is the one that was specifically asked for and that most people were interested in. But again, I couldn't do, you know, the bad red herrings without doing the best red herring. So, what is a bad red herring?

[00:00:27]Well, for starters, a bad red herring is a piece of misdirection that can easily be removed from the story and the story makes just as much sense as it would otherwise. Often, it makes more sense and is more interesting without the bad red herrings. Bad red herrings often fail at the misdirection or very clunkily placed or often just simply not that interesting and clog up the novel, slowing down the pace all for nothing.

[00:00:52]And I have to say, I was surprised by the list here. I would have assumed the list would be filled with subpar novels, but that's not actually the case. There are truly elite novels on this list and I think the reason for that is twofold.

[00:01:06]One, the lesser Christie novels are just flopping on multiple scales. So, a bad red herring there isn't as noticeable or distracting. And the other reason is because these bad red herrings don't actually affect the quality of novels in a major way, often because at least to me, these red herrings are clear red herrings. So, it's much easier to just shove them aside so they don't get in the way. Now, there are spoilers in this video, so you can use the chapter titles to skip around if you need to.

[00:01:35]Before I begin, make sure you like and subscribe to keep up to date with the channel and join in the Discord server if you haven't already. Link in the description below.

[00:01:45]Starting out with honorable mentions or dishonorable mentions. And again, I'm just going to name the novel these come from rather than the red herrings themselves to avoid spoilers. I did not include red herrings from Peril at End House, Lord Edgware Dies, Death in the Clouds, Murder in Mesopotamia, Murder is Easy, Dead Man's Folly, Mrs. McGinty's Dead, A Pocket Full of Rye, A Caribbean Mystery, Third Girl, or Sleeping Murder.

[00:02:12]At number 10, and this is a weird one that probably could have been switched out, but here I have From the Moving Finger, Mrs. Cleat. And if you're not familiar with Mrs. Cleat, it's probably because you have the American version of the novel where she's cut entirely, but she is the like local witch in Lymstock, or at least villagers perceive her to be, and she's more than willing to oblige. And I think because she is cut entirely from like the Geraldine McEwan version, and even the Joan Hickson version, she's scaled back considerably.

[00:02:43]Just goes to show how ineffective she is as a red herring. She's basically sort of the obvious person to be writing these letters, and also in a way that's not like faking the reader out with like, "Oh, the obvious person did it all along" twist. Now, in fairness, I think something Mrs. Cleat red herring does well is sort of covering another much better red herring in Amy Griffith, as we're told repeatedly about like another poison pen letter case done by a girl guide, and that's also a red herring, but still it's never really believable Mrs. Cleat is the titular Moving Finger, and the amount of page time she receives does not really change that. And one tangent here, when I did my best 10 red herrings, I accidentally neglected to include the poison pen letters from this novel. That was an oversight. It was on my short list, but when I was narrowing the short list down in Excel, the poison pen letters sort of got left behind, and I did not notice. And you know, to be fair, it should have been on the list, and quite frankly, like moderately high.

[00:03:46]But again, that doesn't change Mrs. Cleat any, who comes in here at number 10.

[00:03:52]At number nine, we have a red herring sort of more representative of this trope rather than specific to this novel and it comes from Death Comes as the End and it's all the supernatural like events. And like I said, I chose this one to represent the supernatural in general. Now, I think Christie often uses supernatural very well, specifically characters' belief in the supernatural. The issue for me is that should always fall on the reader.

[00:04:18]Christie time and time again pushes us not to fall for the supernatural. It's not real except for some of her more like horror-laden short stories and perhaps Mr. Quinn.

[00:04:28]And Christie does use the supernatural well in other novels like The Sittaford Mystery, The Pale Horse for instance, but a red herring is really crafted to fool the reader more so than the characters in universe. Not that it shouldn't work on both. And I chose Death Comes as the End here specifically because this is the one where it's most obvious this is a red herring and the reader is not falling for it at all.

[00:04:50]But the characters really believe like Nofrit's ghost is killing the family off which is an explanation the reader is just not going to buy and so much page time is given to this. Now, to Christie's credit, she does portray these uh I guess like they're like exorcists as scam artists charging a ridiculous amount of money to Imhotep to like cleanse the house of Nofrit's ghost and even to like his first wife's ghost, but I think this red herring really eats up too much page time for something the reader is never ever buying. And it also like never explains in the first place like who killed Nofrit. And even to see some of the more intelligent characters like Hori, like Esa, go along for this even for like a little bit is just also odd. I mean, they do eventually catch on, but still it it's a bit much. So, Death Comes as the End here comes in at number nine.

[00:05:41]And at number eight. And I almost feel bad putting this one on the list because more than one of you mentioned this in the comments of my best red herring video as one they would have included.

[00:05:51]And I also suspect my putting this on this list is going to be very unpopular, but here I have the attacks on Marina Gregg in The Mirror Crack'd. And this is the, you know, the apparent target was the murderer all along red herring, which did have an entry on the best red herrings list, but the problem for me specifically in The Mirror Crack'd is that it's very transparent. Even by this time Christie wrote this novel, this trick is so easy to see through. A lot of readers can pick up on it. Now, if this is like an early Christie read for you, you're probably like far less likely to pick up on it, but assuming like a relatively chronological order, you can probably see this happening. And it's also not helped by the fact that other aspects of the plot are incredibly obvious even before the murder takes place, which goes a long way in seeing through the red herring. And there are other novels by other authors like Ellery Queen who had already used basically the exact same murder mechanics already with this twist and did it a lot better. And by the time The Mirror Crack'd comes along, it feels repetitive. It feels very see-through.

[00:06:57]And like I said, it think it I think it's harmed by just falling late into the Christie canon and other aspects of the novel making it clearer what's happening working like out against this red herring. Though to be fair, this is not a red herring you can remove from the story and have the story be the same, but again, that does not really doing much for me here. So, I have the attacks on Marina Gregg here at number eight.

[00:07:23]At number seven. And I'm surprised this one isn't higher because this is one of the ones that came immediately to my mind when I think of bad Christie red herrings. And it comes from The Murder at the Vicarage, and it's the Doctor Stone Miss Cram subplot. And if you don't recall, Doctor Stone is a fake archaeologist prowling around on Colonel Protheroe's land with his secretary Miss Cram, and he's stealing the Colonel's valuables and replacing them with replicas. And Miss Cram, by the way, has no idea this is happening. And to me, this is just so silly and frivolous. It feels like obvious padding and another red herring in an novel full of red herrings. But the other red herrings form the basis of the plot, incorporate important characters, and feel real and are interesting. This is none of those things. It's so obvious this is nothing from the start, and it's con- stantly revisited. The only reason why I did not put this higher is because there's at least like a clue like tangentially related to this and like that rock that Lawrence Redding brings Miss Marple has found like around where Dr. Stone is searching. That it's like found or whatever or Miss Marple's thinking about it because of Dr. Stone. So, at least that's like something.

[00:08:31]So, I have this here at number seven.

[00:08:35]At number six, and this is where I think we're getting into like the devastatingly bad red herrings, and we have one from Mrs. McGinty's Dead, and that is Dr. Rendell's past. And for me, this is bad because it's extremely underdeveloped as a plot point. And while I did say some of the more underdeveloped ones didn't make the list because they didn't really impact the story, this one does. There is talk about like Mrs. Rendell getting letters and something shady in Dr. Rendell's past about his first wife and how she died, and this is treated by Poirot as something major, but and it's like somehow like barely in the book. And it's supposed to have this like major impact. Allegedly, Dr. Rendell is the one who shoved Poirot in front of the train for this, even though we're not even sure that it's exactly what happened. This subplot gets no actual conclusion except for like vague mentions of what Poirot thinks will happen.

[00:09:27]Now, this doesn't eat up a lot of page time necessarily, and I do like the concept of like the villagers thinking Poirot is in Broadhinny for some other reason than looking into Mrs. McGinty's death, but this ain't it. This is a very underdeveloped storyline that is treated as much bigger than it really is, giving the impression that this is an obvious red herring. It's all very vague. It's talked about a lot, you know, it but yet it doesn't go anywhere. And you know, if you were wondering what the honorable mention for Mrs. McGinty was, it's Deirdre Henderson's past, which again, slightly better than Dr. Rendell stuff that comes in here at number six.

[00:10:07]At number five, and this one is just so ridiculous to me, and it is Linda experimenting with voodoo in Evil Under the Sun. And to me, this one flops on multiple levels. First of all, it's not credible to me that Linda would actually think she like voodoo doll'd Arlena to death, even in Linda's fragile mental state. She's a smart teenage girl. I really don't think she'd fall for this and fall for it as hard as she does. She was all consumed by it. And me to be fair, Christine Redfern is pushing that on her, but still And also, it fails to convince the reader as well. The reader is never going to believe Linda murdered Arlena via voodoo doll, which is something I think Christie is at least proposing as an idea. I mean, I think the reader could believe Linda murdered Arlena, but just not through this way.

[00:10:55]And because Linda thinks she did it this way, it eliminates Linda entirely. And again, we're also dabbling in the supernatural here, which Christie is always telling us isn't real. And so in the novel, this And the novel is pretty short to begin with. So, the fact that this storyline gets so much page time, despite being an obvious red herring, it's pretty bad.

[00:11:16]And even like, I know a lot of the covers, the book covers for Evil Under the Sun like prominently feature a voodoo doll or like the wax candle. It's just so overblown, and it's never fooling anyone. It's not credible. And yet, somehow this isn't even the worst red herring from Evil Under the Sun.

[00:11:34]That one is coming up next. But here I have Linda and her voodoo at number five.

[00:11:41]And at number four, the other bad red herring from Evil Under the Sun, and that is Horace Blatt's drug smuggling.

[00:11:47]And what in the name of Nile Marsh is this? And to be fair, I mean, if this were a Nile Marsh novel, Horace Blatt would have been the murderer. So, at least we don't have that. But this is another just extremely obvious red herring, especially from Christie, who almost never uses drugs in terms of like her murderer plot. Drugs are always a red herring, and this one I think is particularly egregious, given just how obvious of a red herring this is. And not only that, this is something like of a mystery of who the drug smuggler is, even though it's just very obvious it's Horace Blatt. And you absolutely can cut Horace Blatt out of the story, and it remains exactly the same, and is probably even better. And this is just a subplot Christie would never use in her mystery novels, even her core thrillers.

[00:12:33]Like, she would never do this. Like, it's not entertaining. It's not suspenseful. Most of the adaptations change his role or exclude him entirely.

[00:12:42]I don't buy the claim that this plot is necessary to the idea that like, "Oh, anyone could could have killed Arlena because anyone could be the drug smuggler, and she like stumbled across the cave by accident or whatever." Like, no, not everyone could be the drug smuggler, and that has never stopped any mystery author before. It's just an all-around bad red herring. Now, you might think I hate Evil Under the Sun because it has two entries high up on this list, but I actually love Evil Under the Sun. So, it goes to show it doesn't really affect the quality, but still, Horace Blatt and his drug smuggling comes in at number four.

[00:13:18]At number three, we have the worst red herring from a Miss Marple novel, and it comes to us by way of Saint Honore with the murder of Greg Dyson's first wife in a Caribbean Mystery. And I think at first glance, you might say this is a very effective red herring because Miss Marple is looking for a wife murderer, and here we have a murdered wife. The problem is this red herring is extremely underdeveloped and involves four characters who are all pretty bad and not interesting. It feels like an obvious red herring Christie inserted into the story to be a red herring and incriminate like the Hillingdons and the Dysons. And I think the worst part about this is that it's extremely forgettable.

[00:13:56]This is probably like the 20th thing I think of when I think of A Caribbean Mystery, and I forget about it all the time even when I reread the book or watch the adaptation. I go, "Oh, yeah, that was a thing." It's made all the worse because the Hillingdons and the Dysons are simply not viable suspects.

[00:14:13]They aren't in the novel enough, and this red herring is sort of laid clunkily in there. It's also very detached from Major Palgrave's story.

[00:14:21]So, like even that as a comparison doesn't work. Like Major Palgrave's looking for someone who like uh a husband whose wife like tried to commit suicide. He saved her, and then he murdered her. Like that is not what happened at all with Greg Dyson's first wife. So, again, that doesn't really work. And I actually think this red herring is sort of like the first tell that Christie's power in writing is waning in her later years. I don't like this plot is largely ineffective. So, I have Greg Dyson's first wife here at number three.

[00:14:53]And at number two, and these two plus The Murder at the Vicarage were the ones that immediately came to mind for this video. And at number two, we have Sir Roderick's missing letters from Third Girl. And it might be even a little kind to call this a red herring as it is totally detached from anything else going on in the novel. It's also never really suggested at any point this had anything to do with the murder that no one knows happened. It's just so obvious padding, and the worst part is there's no mystery involving this at all. Poirot is just like, it's Sonia, and Sir Rogers like, it's not Sonia, and you know, what do you know, it's Sonia. This gets so much page time randomly in the middle of the novel. It's not even something like proposed at the beginning and sort of like flopping throughout the story. It's randomly inserted into the middle of the novel. It's an obvious red herring. It's not interesting and has no suspense. And in the end, it's Sonia who did it for reasons that are not even clear or explicable. And then she's just going to marry Sir Roderick. I have no idea why Christie did this, especially since this novel is long enough. It did not need padding. And to me, it sort of reeked of like Christie adding in a semi-thriller element into a traditional mystery, which is something she did a lot of in her later career. And I think it was because as she has admitted in her writings, it was just much easier for her to write thriller content because she didn't have to worry about it making sense. And yeah, I mean, I could see that here. But this is a real dud that has just absolutely no purpose, no interest, and it comes in at number two.

[00:16:24]And at number one, and if you're a long-time listener to this channel, you probably know what I have here. I talk about it as much as I can, how much I hate this red herring every opportunity it comes up, and it comes from Death on the Nile, and it's the Colonel Race Richetti subplot. And I have absolutely no idea why this is in the novel at all.

[00:16:44]It's so disjointed with the rest of the book. Death on the Nile is, I believe, Christie's >> [snorts] >> longest novel. It did not need padding.

[00:16:52]It also has a huge cast of characters already. not need Richetti. And the worst thing is that it added absolutely nothing to the novel. It did not add intrigue or mystery or even mildly entertaining. It's also pretty obvious from the start that the mystery person Colonel Race is after is Richetti. And that scene where Lynette picks up the wrong note and sees a list of vegetables, and like Richetti gets mad, it's just so ridiculous and telling. And I don't think he adds anything to the novel at all. I don't think this idea that someone on board is a mass murderer adds anything because everyone on board is already a plausible murder suspect.

[00:17:28]They all have plausible motives to murder Linnet. I also don't buy this was necessary to get Colonel Race into the novel because Poirot needs someone to talk to in the absence of like a Hastings or a Mrs. Oliver or even a police inspector, but Colonel Race could just be on the Karnak to begin with. And Colonel Race does very little in that regards to anyway. And the fact that this Supple keeps popping up interrupting a truly elite Christie novel is what propels this to number one. Death on the Nile is a truly elite novel and that makes this red herring stand out all the more compared to Third Girl, which is not an elite novel by any means. So, the terrible red herring there isn't as devastating on the novel as this one is. It's horrible. It's distracting in a very irritating way.

[00:18:13]And also what Racchetti's crimes are are kind of vague to begin with. There's just no substance to it. No reason why we should care and quite frankly, I don't care. So, Racchetti comes in at number one.

[00:18:25]And that is it for this video. Let me know in the comments what you think about my list and what you think the worst red herrings in Agatha Christie's novels are. Maybe at some point in the future I will do red herrings for short stories, although to be quite frank, nothing really comes to mind as bad red herrings in Agatha Christie short stories, but maybe I can do this for other authors as well. Next week, I'm back with a retrospective on an Agatha Christie novel and it is a classic, Cards on the Table, celebrating 90 years in 2026.

[00:18:57]So, stay tuned for that. Until next time, Mystery Files.