Fair Play

By (author) Hegarty Louise
Short description/annotation:
A detective calls on a shell-shocked group of friends in this thrillingly inventive novel of love and grief with a murder-mystery twist
Description:

This is a murder mystery.
This is a story about love.
Or is it? . . .

Fair Play is the puzzle-box story of two competing tales that brilliantly lay bare the real truth of life - the terrifying mystery of grief.

''A treat – clever, confident, and always surprising'' - Paul Murray, author of THE BEE STING

Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close. To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken.

In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin.

Suddenly everything is not quite what it seems. An eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin’s killer. The house now has a butler, a gardener and a housekeeper. This is a locked-room mystery, and everyone is a suspect.

As Abigail attempts to fathom her brother’s unexpected death in a world that has been turned upside down, she begins to wonder whether perhaps the true mystery might have been his life . . .

''Dazzling, formally subversive, brimming with compassion'' - Colin Walsh, author of KALA

''A dark, twisting, dismantling work . . . I''ve never read anything like it'' - Emma Stonex, author of THE LAMPLIGHTERS

''A triumph'' - Lisa McInerney, author of THE GLORIOUS HERESIES

Review quote:
Louise Hegarty’s genre-splicing debut is a treat – clever, confident, and always surprising, a mystery story that ingeniously escapes the locked room of the genre to take on the biggest questions of life and death
Review quote:
Dazzling, formally subversive, brimming with compassion, Fair Play explodes the conventions of a mystery in order to confront us with the genuinely mysterious. An emotional ambush of a novel, this book will delight readers – then it will haunt them
Review quote:
A fiendishly designed, intricately layered, psychologically astute tale, and so elegantly written too. I''ve never read anything like it . . . a story of striking originality. I am full of admiration.
Review quote:
An ingenious puzzle-box of a novel . . . Sad, funny, clever, engrossing; this is a wonderful debut.
Review quote:
With each turn of a page the plot thickens masterfully and the form twists like a wicked game. Get to the Louise Hegarty party early, she’s brilliant.
Review quote:
Fair Play is ambitious and unpredictable and riotous and at the same time full of meaning and compassion. It''s a triumph
Review quote:
I loved it . . . intriguing, smart, fun, and devastatingly poignant . . . I shall now read everything Louise Hegarty ever writes
Review quote:
Each time you think you’ve got the measure of this clever and immensely readable debut, it turns around at the door, looks you in the eye, and offers up one more twist, one more audacious shattering of genre and convention that you never saw coming
Review quote:
Louise Hegarty is such a talented writer. In Fair Play, she delivers a Rubik''s Cube of a debut novel, both an expert evocation of a Golden Age mystery and something else entirely. I was moved and surprised and I can''t wait to see what she does next.
Biographical note:
Louise Hegarty’s stories have appeared in B