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Good
mystery writers know all about red herrings, clues that are designed to
mislead readers and make them suspect the wrong whodunit characters. Of
course, the placement of red herrings is deliberate because you want to
keep the reader surprised as to who the true culprit is as the story
unfolds.
In the world of counseling and
psychology, families do this all the time. It’s called scapegoating. A
common example is when a child gets pinned as the guilty party when in
actuality, the dysfunction in the family stems from the mother or
father’s relationship.
Families do this to draw
attention away from the actual problem and onto someone else. “My
absentee parenting and alcohol abuse is not the problem. Little Junior
is. See how he constantly throw tantrums?”
Never mind that he throws
tantrums as a way to cope when Dad’s drunk and abusive. At least when
he’s having a tantrum, Dad doesn’t hit Mom because they both turn their
focus onto him.
Writers scapegoat characters all
the time, especially in mystery writing. We want our readers to focus
attention elsewhere while we hide the truth from them. In counseling,
this deflection is not good and actually interferes with the
therapeutic process. In mystery writing, this distraction is a
necessary evil pleasure that makes the
mystery harder to solve.
When
I’m counseling a family that exhibits a scapegoating tendency, it truly
gives me a headache. All the anger and stress and frustration is
directed at one person, and any attempt on my part to lighten the
scapegoat’s load is met with denial.
I’d
like to propose that mystery
writers should be so good at scapegoating that any attempt on the
author’s part to weave in clues pointing to some other killer or thief
would be met with reader denial as well.
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If
you’ve done the work to throw
off the reader, make them truly buy into it. Make the case so ironclad
that the reader says to himself, “Well, it has to be Colonel Mustard. I
mean, he mentioned how attractive and costly that candlestick was
earlier in the book. It was even found next to the victim, and it had
his fingerprints on it. He had to have committed
the crime.”
This is exactly what
scapegoating families do. They drag out one piece of evidence after
another to prove their point that Little Junior is the problem (read:
culprit). “He won’t listen. He doesn’t obey. He screams and kicks. He’s
out of control.”
Once you’ve gotten the reader
rattling off a list of evidence that points to Colonel Mustard and you
have them summarily dismissing other clues you planted that show his
innocence, you’ve done your scapegoating job well.
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