Find the Red Herring in a Book

Quick Win

Sharpening your detective skills can support your memory.

Try This Today

• Who seems guilty? The next time you read a mystery, thriller or suspense novel, take note — in the margins or in your mind — of the assumptions you make that lead you to suspect a particular character of the crime.
• Don’t be fooled. A character may seem to be a likely suspect based on certain qualities, like fidgeting or avoiding eye contact. But making assumptions may lead you in the wrong direction.
• Review the clues. Once you’ve finished the book, revisit the clues that either helped or hurt your chances of identifying the culprit.

Why

If you love mystery novels, we have good news: Research has shown they can help engage your brain. In a small functional MRI study of 23 adults ages 19 to 32 published in PLoS One in 2015, reading a suspenseful story resulted in activation of brain areas associated with event prediction and social interaction. A key characteristic of this type of literature is the red herring: A character or plot point throws you off the trail, making it more challenging to solve the crime. Learning to recognize red herring patterns is a fun way to exercise your brain. Surprising plot twists can trigger your curiosity — and according to a review published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2019, curiosity plays a role in learning and memory encoding.