conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book about Wimsey, Campbell, Campbell\'s entitled The Five Red Herrings?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Five Red Herrings: The story is set in Galloway, a part of Scotland popular with artists because of its landscapes.\nSandy Campbell is a talented painter, but also a notoriously quarrelsome drunkard.\nWhen he is found dead in a stream, with a half-finished painting on the bank above, it is assumed at first that he fell in accidentally, fracturing his skull.\nLord Peter Wimsey, who is in the region on a fishing holiday, points out an inconsistency that makes it impossible for Campbell to have worked on the painting.\n(Sayers leaves the reader to work out what exactly the clue is) Campbell\'s death is now a murder case.\nWhoever killed Campbell also executed the painting in Campbell\'s distinctive style, to contrive the appearance of an accident.\nSix other nearby artists are talented enough to achieve this and also had recent public brawls with Campbell.\nNow Wimsey must figure out "who done it" and who the five red herrings are.\nThis is difficult, because almost all the suspects behave suspiciously: some leave the district unexpectedly and without explanation, others give obviously inaccurate statements or conceal facts.\nThe policemen investigating other aspects of the case come up against inexplicable dead ends.\nThe Five Red Herrings is the Peter Wimsey story most obviously set as a puzzle for the reader.\nThere is only a closed circle of suspects to deal with, and Wimsey has no emotional involvement—though, having alerted the police to Campbell\'s murder, he reflects that Campbell was a man anyone might feel justified in killing, and that the six suspects are all generally decent people.\nHe nevertheless resolves to uncover the truth, so that the five innocent artists should not live under lifelong suspicion.\nThe plot is told from the viewpoint of Wimsey, and of the various police investigating the case, including Wimsey\'s brother-in-law Charles Parker.\nParker is involved because a suspect is in hiding in London.\nLarge parts of the book follow the various Scottish police officers, who are shown as highly intelligent and competent, and for a time seem to overshadow Wimsey.\nIn contrast, Bunter (Wimsey\'s manservant) plays a smaller role in this than in other Wimsey novels.\nWimsey works in close co-operation with the police throughout the book; indeed, in one episode a character angrily accuses him of ".\nentering people\'s homes as a police spy".\nThe six suspects are all eventually traced and give statements in which they deny killing Campbell.\nSome have convincing alibis, others have none.\nFinally, Wimsey, the Procurator Fiscal, the Chief Constable and the police officers involved in the investigation meet to review the evidence.\nWorking from the knowledge the reader has been given, the police put forward several theories, implicating all of the suspects either as the killer or as accessories.\nAsked for his opinion, Wimsey finally reveals to the reader exactly what alerted him to the murder, and points the finger at the true killer.\nAlthough the police are sceptical, Wimsey offers to reconstruct the crime and over the course of twenty-four hours\' strenuous activity, he demonstrates how the killer contrived the scene above the stream and established an alibi.\nThe killer finally realises that the case against him is unbreakable and confesses, but pleads that he killed Campbell in self-defence.\nWhen the case is tried, the jury decide that he is guilty of manslaughter (which carries a lighter sentence) rather than premeditated murder.