Just like an illusionist’s performance, a crime novel often depends on misdirection. So do fictional murderers. If everyone’s attention is shifted, it’s far easier for a criminal to go unnoticed. Of course, there are lots of ways to misdirect. And it can take planning and sometimes real finesse . But when it works well, misdirection can be an effective way to keep crime fiction readers guessing, and it invites readers to match wits with the author.

Fans of Agatha Christie will know that she was highly skilled at misdirection. Without giving away titles or sleuths (no spoilers on this blog!) here are a few examples. In a couple of her stories, Christie’s fictional murders move objects so that it’s unclear exactly where the victim was killed. That trick doesn’t fool the sleuth in the end, but it does buy the murderer some time. In other stories, the murderer is set up to look like a victim to divert suspicion. That misdirection leads the sleuth astray (at least for a time) and gives the killer some ‘breathing space.’ Disguise (or at least, for example, wearing someone else’s coat and hat) is another effective way to misdirect. Christie certainly used that strategy several times (again, no details, to prevent spoilers).

Other authors have used that sort of strategy as well. For example, in Anthony McCarten’s Going Zero, we are introduced to Boston librarian Kaitlyn Day. She’s been selected to take part in a contest sponsored by the US government in cooperation with a high-tech company called Fusion. On a particular day, all competitors will be given a ‘Go Zero’ alert. From that moment, they’ll have two hours to disappear from the grid and make their escapes. Then, Fusion’s Catch Teams will be given their photographs, names, addresses, and telephone numbers and sent to find them. Any contestant still at large after 30 days will win three million dollars. Kaitlyn knows that CCTV cameras and facial recognition technology will make it hard to evade the Catch Teams, so she takes measures to look as little like herself as she can. She also tries to distract the Catch Team with fake ‘breadcrumbs.’ And that misdirection works well enough at first. The question will be how long she can keep up the subterfuge, especially considering how much the catch teams can find out about her, just from what’s already available online. As the contest goes on, Kaitlyn finds herself drawn into a very dangerous web of international intrigue, corporate greed, and more.

Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop offers a really interesting example of how misdirection can cloud an investigation. A poet called Richard Cadogan pays a visit to Oxford. Late one night, he’s taking a walk around town when he comes upon a toyshop. On impulse, he tries the door and finds it unlocked. He goes inside and, on the second floor, he discovers the body of a woman. Before he can alert the authorities, he’s knocked unconscious. When he wakes, he’s not in a toyshop at all, but in a grocer’s. There’s no toyshop nearby, and there’s no body. Now thoroughly confused, he visits his friend, Oxford don Gervase Fen, and asks for his help. Fen agrees, and the two men start asking questions. It turns out that the toyshop was a feat of misdirection to hide a sinister plan involving a will.

In Paddy Richardson’s Cross Fingers, Wellington TV journalist Rebecca Thorne is asked to do a story commemorating the anniversary of the 1981 (South Africa) Springboks’ rugby tour of New Zealand. The tour was controversial, because at the time, apartheid was still the law in South Africa, and there were strong calls to cancel the tour, along with protests and demonstrations. On the other side were those who had political or economic interests in having the tour go on as scheduled, and that’s not to mention the police, who were expected to keep protest demonstrators from causing harm. The whole thing ended up with police battling protestors in a way that hadn’t happened before in New Zealand. At first, Thorne doesn’t know what angle she’ll take, since the story’s been covered for decades since the tour. Then, she notices something. There’s an almost-hidden story about two men who would dress as lambs and go to the various matches to dance and entertain the crowds. Then, they stopped attending. Thorne also finds that one of them was murdered. At first it was put down to the chaos that surrounded the controversial tour. But Thorne isn’t so sure. As she looks into the case more closely, she finds that, while everyone’s focus was misdirected during one of the matches, someone took advantage of that lack of attention…

No-one’s more skilled at misdirection than an illusionist. They are experts at misdirection and can often spot it when others use it. That’s what helps Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector. He’s a conjuror who sometimes works with the police to help unravel some of their more baffling cases. For instance, in Death and the Conjuror, Spector solves the murder of famous psychiatrist Anselm Rees, who was killed in his study. No-one could have got in or out without being observed, and the study window was locked from the inside. So how did the thing happen? Spector uses his knowledge of misdirection to work out how and by whom the murder was committed. And he uses some of his own misdirection to catch the criminal.

I’ve only really scratched the surface here. Misdirection is an essential part of a lot of crime stories – far more than there’s space for in one post. But if you pay close attention, you may see it for yourself in the next crime novel you read. And the next time someone tries to misdirect you, pay attention; there could be more going on than you think…

The photo is of two of the very best experts on misdirection: Penn Jilette and Raymond Teller. Hey, they even misdirected you into thinking I had a photo taken with them (that photo was taken several years ago) … 😉

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Robben Ford’s Misdirected Blues.