I am at a complete loss as to what Louise Hegarty wanted to achieve with Fair Play. Is it a conceptual/post-modern take on the murder mystery? Is it satire? Is it something that you come up with when you are bored with all the "new novels" being written and published recently? I just don't know. What I do know is that I did not draw much enjoyment from reading it. I'll be honest, I was curious, but the more I've read, the more puzzled I've been, and not in a good way....

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of the eBook.

The synopsis and unique concept made me so excited to read this book but it just didn’t work for me. I found myself just getting really confused and struggling to get through the chapters.

I feel like we didn’t really get a chance to get to know the characters or even care about what was happening.

This book just wasn’t for me, sorry!

I’m not overly sure about this one. It starts out listing the key elements of a good murder mystery, then the murder occurs, and the detective arrives - but is he also a writer as well? References are made to “chapters” by the detective, which didn’t really make sense to me. A few characters pop in then leave that I see not much point in, and the ending is strange..

I mostly enjoyed this book, even though the format of it left be a bit bemused. I’m sure others will love it.

My thanks to Netgalley and The Picador Team for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

2.5*

This is a really fun concept that didn't quite work out in execution unfortunately.

Following in the footsteps of Benjamin Stevenson's 'Ernest Cunningham' series, this is a meta murder mystery that plays with the reader as it builds layers of intrigue through its structural quirkiness.

At its heart lies a solid locked room mystery that is upended with style changes that turns it into a golden age story within a detective story. As readers we're invited to decipher the clues along the way by breaking the fourth wall to tease us about the possibilities for the solution.

I will admit I ended up a little confused and felt dissatisfied by the ending. The beauty of this style of murder mystery is that you generally get a denouement that provides closure, not the case here.

I also struggled with the characters. We only get a glimpse of them in the first part of the book and their characterisation is never built out enough to become fully invested in the victim, murderer or the rest of the suspects.

Overall this is enjoyable enough, its a pretty unique story structure with classic tropes but just misses the mark as a whole.

Thank you to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for a digital review copy of "Fair Play" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.

I really don’t know what I just read, it seemed like two totally different books squished together - maybe I missed the point but what was it all supposed to mean? Then there was a small section at the end which didn’t really add anything at all. Is the detective part supposed to be a dream or a metaphor? I just didn’t get it. All the repetition was intensely irritating too. I finished it mainly to see if it was all going to tie together but it didn’t.

On paper this was the perfect read for me. I love golden age detective fiction, I love literary fiction and I love a good mystery story. And this is all of that. However, for me I found it all a bit confusing. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it I just didn’t find it flowed quite how I expected.

Briefly, Abigail is throwing a lavish murder mystery party, in a grand house, to celebrate her brother Benjamins birthday. The first evening is drink fuelled with fun and games and some unexpected relationship narrative. The next morning Benjamin is found dead in a locked room. The Gardai conclude that it’s a suicide. And this is where the plot splits into two! The present where Abigail is grieving her loss and a continuation of the murder mystery with celebrated detective Auguste Bell trying to solve the case, at times breaking the fourth wall to address the reader directly.

The author is clearly a fan of the detective genre and it shows. I liked the feeling I got of trying to solve the mystery alongside Bell and his awkward colleague Sacker. However, there was a lot of repetition which I found unnecessary. The premise of the story is great but for me it just didn’t quite come off. This is definitely one to read yourself and make up your own mind as it’s hard to explain without spoilers. Interesting and thought provoking.

The story started strong, entertaining and full of promise, but quickly grew convoluted. A shame, because with a tighter execution, it could have been great.

This grew on me toward the end but if I hadn't received an eARC directly from Picador, I'm not sure I would have put in the effort to keep plodding through the early sections.

Abigail throws an annual combined New Years Eve/Birthday party for her beloved older brother, Benjamin. She constructs a murder-mystery evening, each year more elaborate than the last. Only this year, the party wakes up on New Years Day to a real dead body in a locked room. The Gardai say Benjamin killed himself.

From here the plot diverges into two paths: in one, we see Abigail struggling to cope in the aftermath of her brother's death. In the other, we continue the Golden Age Detective story begun at the murder-mystery dinner, where Benjamin's death is investigated as if in a book.

The author is clearly a huge fan of detective stories and very knowledgeable about their quirks and formulae. I don't think the 'fair play' aspect was utilised very well, though. It actually felt like an unnecessary distraction. It set up the expectation that FAIR PLAY might be a murder-mystery when it isn't. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it solely used the detective sections as a commentary on the need to create narratives to help us understand and process grief because that's where they shone. The meta asides poking good-natured fun at the genre also felt a little out of place: the main storyline was too dour for them to fit in, tone-wise, but the jokes weren't funny enough to feel like comic relief.

Overall, I liked the concept behind this and I think the author has some good intentions with this book but it was muddled in execution. The inclusion of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction was a bit scattershot and never fully justified its own inclusion.

I haven't a clue what I was meant to do with this. It was very confusing and for me, unnecessarily so. maybe I'm being particularly obtuse, but I didn't get it.

Abigail is organising a murder mystery party for her brother Benjamin's birthday in a house rented via AirBnB. Their invited group of friends had a great night. However, the next morning Benjamin was found dead in his bedroom. Now the story split. On the one hand the celebrated detective Auguste Bell is trying to solve the locked room murder mystery in the style of a British detective thriller, even breaking the fourth wall and adressing the reader. On the other hand Abigail is dealing with her grief and the funeral of her brother, trying to figure out what really happened.

I enjoyed the beginning and the description of the murder mystery weekend. When Detective Bell appears in the second part, the facts are not consistent any more. For example, the rented AirBnB turned into Abigail and Benjamin's house, complete with butler and gardener. The last part consisted of a trip to the beach when Abigail and Ben were young in which I failed to see the significance to the rest of the story.

There were some good parts in the book and the individual storylines were promising but ultimately they didn't fit together. I couldn't figure out what I might have missed but all considered this book wasn't for me, unfortunately.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan/ Picador for providing me with the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book really caught me off guard, it was not what I was expecting at all. I went into this thinking it was going to be a fun little murder mystery, Christie-esque, a little Knives Out but that was not the case at all! Yes it had those campy vibes but I wasn't expecting it to be used as a way to explain a character trying to understand a death of a loved one. Such a unique take. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend.

I think this will be a marmite book. For me, it was certainly a book of two halves. The first being your traditional whodunnit locked-room murder and the second dealing with the unimaginable grief of losing someone. Reading it, it felt like Abigail was trying to find a killer as she just couldn’t accept the alternative of what her brother had done, so I felt that the detective, Auguste Bell, was a figment of her imagination. Although it did get repetitive, I did enjoy reading all the different scenarios. Yes, it is something different, no it isn’t your usual conventional murder mystery book and yes it does cover coming to terms with grief so you need to go into it with an open mind and appreciate you are reading something different. Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan / Picador for letting me read and review this book.

Fair Play by Louise Hegarty – ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

Fair Play has a gripping premise—a New Year’s Eve party turned deadly, secrets unravelling, and a murder that invites the reader to play detective. The concept is clever, blending a locked-room mystery with metafictional flair.

While the beginning hooks you in with sharp character work and intrigue, the story becomes muddled as it progresses. The introduction of the self-aware detective is unique, but repetitive narration and a confusing structure slow the momentum.

A creative twist on the classic whodunnit, but ultimately let down by its execution. Worth a try for mystery fans open to something experimental.

Louise Hegarty's "Fair Play" starts with an intriguing premise: Abigail and her brother invite her friends to a murder mystery party. When Benjamin is killed, Abigail must identify his killer. I had high hopes for this mystery, and Hegarty's writing was witty enough to carry me along. The book makes fun of the tropes of the Agatha Christie type murder where a cast of characters is gathered in an isolated setting as murders happen. On that basis, the book is fun. It's a light-hearted romp. It makes for a nice treat on a Sunday afternoon.

An unusual and clever genre bending idea which is quite difficult to describe but ... is a split story line regarding the death of Benjamin, a young man at a murder mystery new year's eve / birthday party thrown by his sister and attended by a few close friends.
The grief of his sister in the present day is juxtaposed with an Agatha Christie era detective trying to follow all the rules of detective novels, and breaking the 4th wall at times to tell us that's what he's doing, and discover what happened to Benjamin.
It didn't pull together completely for me, but I felt as a study in grief and loss and the desperate need for answers it worked really well, and I look forward to reading more by this author
Thank you to netgalleyand Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of this book.

Sadly, I was underwhelmed by this book, I felt it tried too hard and the repetition was irritating. I did enjoy the Agatha Christie references though, as well as reading about the ‘rules’ of detective fiction, as I once read a book where the murder was done with the help of a previously unmentioned identical twin; very definitely breaking the rules. I’m old fashioned in that I like one solution to a literary murder and a proper ending, so this didn’t deliver for me.

The concept of this book was great and I was excited to read it but unfortunately I was unable to keep up with the events therefore the storyline became too confusing for me. Perhaps a re-read may be required to fully enjoy it.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This book made such a promising start with a bit of a locked room murder mystery style story on the cards, but it then took a very strange turn and the story went in an unexpected and, for me, disappointing direction.

I think the concept of this book is fascinating but the execution let it down, unfortunately. Abigail gathers friends in a country mansion for a murder mystery party for her brother, Benjamin. But when he's found dead the next morning, she's convinced someone is to blame. Here, the novel splits, moving between Abigail's grief and a fantasy state where she imagines a classic detective assessing the motivations of the guests and finding the killer. This is a fascinating way to consider grief, but I found the characters so thin (maybe deliberately echoing genre tropes) that I didn't care about them at all, and I found the ending left me cold, even though I understood the concept behind it. I wish the characters had been more fleshed-out, but I hope the author continues experimenting with form, as it's an interesting idea.

Invited to a big birthday bash to be held in the countryside on New Year’s Eve, Abigail and Benjamin play host to a group of close knit friends. But everyone has a secret. The stroke of midnight begins a chain of events that will smash these friendships apart.

Fair Play is an unusual book with so many details to keep hold of as the story progresses. It takes the locked room mystery and breaks through the fourth wall with a detective who knows he’s playing to his audience of readers.