A murder mystery party takes place on New Year’s Eve to celebrate Benjamin’s birthday. Present are his sister, friends and a co-worker, but in the morning one of them is absent. Benjamin is dead and his sister Abigail is distraught, as the police believes he died by suicide. But then a famous detective arrives at the house, and starts the investigation, according to strict rules of the detective fiction. He gets a sidekick, he talks to witnesses, he looks for clues. Because Benjamin’s death needs to be explained, somehow.

I have never read a book like Fair Play - clever, well written, original and gender bending novel which plays with the tropes from the Golden Age of crime fiction in a truly unusual way. If you enjoy the meta fiction crime genre, this is a book for you. There are numerous nods towards the rules in which the detective fiction works, mentions of other fiction works, and even some names are being dropped into the story. But it is up to the reader to decide what in the story is fiction and what is reality, as Abigail tries to piece her life together after her brother’s departure.
As the reader gets sucked into the investigation, there comes the realisation that the book might not be actually what it seems to be, that we are all duped into believing the tropes and expectations instead of focusing on the more important part of the book - who Benjamin really was.

The first chapters of this murder mystery set in an Air BnB amongst old friends who have coincedentally met up to enjoy an annual murder role play weekend wre intriguing. However, the narrative descended into lots of boring, intricate and irrelevant descriptions. After the murder it then became very disjointed and kind of fizzled out. I think the book had good bones and a fun premise.

The main “rules” for a Murder mystery are: someone dies, someone investigates the murder, someone is found guilty, and motive is explained (the author here helpfully provides the three best known sets of rules at the start of Part Two). But first we have Part One. Its New Year’s Day (2023 – 4?) and Benjamin’s birthday. Which he never sees because he has died, in his sleep; which is initially ruled as suicide. On New Year’s Eve he and his sister Abigail had held their traditional Murder Mystery party in a rented Airbnb mansion, with a bunch, mainly of his, friends: Stephen (an old school friend), Declan (a childhood friend), Cormac (a University friend), Olivia (Cormac’s newish girlfriend), Margaret (his ex-fiancée) and Barbara (his PA but maybe something more). No one can believe it is suicide, but equally they can’t believe it is murder, since that would mean one of them is the killer.
Logically, Part Two should be the investigation and so it is; or, rather, so it isn’t! Suddenly we have the same cast of suspects and the same corpse, only it’s now sometime in the past (feels like 1950s), the Part One events happened in Benjamin and Abigail’s ancestral mansion, and a famous detective, Auguste Bell, (basically Poirot without the accent) has been called in to investigate. He does this in the time honoured way, spotting clues, making deductions, finding someone guilty and explaining the motive. Or did he . . . time for a rethink, perhaps. This is written in a Meta format, with Bell knowing he is in a book explaining the workings of the story. Interspersed with this we have Abigail, in the present, imbued in grief but struggling to understand the suicide and get on with her life. And eventually we have Part Three, which probably means different thing to every reader.
This is an experimental novel, a piece of speculative fiction, playing with detective fiction tropes, possibly playing with Space-Time, possibly exemplifying how a bereaved person shapes and controls the experience of death. Or all of these, or none of these. More than most stories, it requires the reader to impose their personal experience on the interpretation. I suspect it will thrill some, frustrate many, puzzle everyone. It deserves applause for taking the risk. The writing is very good, albeit that Bell is pastiche. As for the plot, I’m still not clear how many there are, probably one per character. Star ratings attempt to provide a comparison with other books, which is tricky if you can’t think of a comparator. My feeling is 3.5 rounded to 4.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

This is a beautifully written, intricate puzzle of a novel, it felt unique and very accomplished, an intriguing setting and premise.

Thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for my advanced copy in exchange for a review. I didn't enjoy the constant restating of the rules around writing a murder mystery and I soon became very confused and lost interest. I stuck with it and the end was OK, just a shame the middle wasn't great.

Thank you to the author, publishers Picador and NetGalley UK for access to this as an advance reader’s ebook. This is an honest and voluntary review.

When Abigail’s murder mystery birthday party for her brother Benjamin ends in tragedy she wants to find out why he died. But some mysteries may never be solved.

This is an interesting attempt to really cleverly deal with telling a story about the aftermath of an unexpected death. I can see where the author was going, but I feel like it just misses the mark by trying too hard.

I know it won’t have helped that I was reading a digital proof. I imagine there’ll be font choices and markers in the final print copy that will make it easier to follow the switches between Abigail’s perspective in the weeks and months after her brother’s death and the ‘locked room mystery’ detective story version of the immediate aftermath. But, that assumption may be wrong. It may be intended to throw the reader off balance as much as I felt.

I can’t really say whether I liked the characters. Between the three different perspectives - pre-death, mystery, and grieving Abigail - it was difficult to get a real sense of any of the characters. Which version of any of them was real? This again made it difficult to follow the plot. And to not end up thoroughly confused you have to be paying attention.

Please also be aware that there is no final reveal of what happened to Benjamin. It’s strongly implied, but never stated clearly. Which is apt for the subject matter. But, if you’re looking for a cosy mystery, or a fun read, this isn’t where you’ll find it.

This was, well, interesting. I went into this without any expectations and found it an enjoyable, though unconventional read. It's really two stories in one, an attempt to explain one through the other though a solution is never clearly stated in the main story, only alluded to. I liked all the references to classic crime, so that'a an extra bonus if you are a classic crime fan. It's well written and has a nice atmosphere. Good for a couple of hours of entertainment but it may leave you wondering.

This book was really well done! I have never read a book quite like this, I loved the mix of genre and the fourth wall breaking in part 2. It was a really sensitive look at how grief can affect and how desperate the grieving are to find a reason. As someone who doesn’t read much in the way of murder mystery style books, it was fun to unexpectedly dip my toe into the genre and the explanations of the different rules of the genre was a bonus. I really enjoyed this book and would love to read more from this author. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

rattled through this!! this is a spin on a detective murder mystery, centring on abi, who throws an annual murder mystery birthday party for her brother ben. i can't really say anything about this book because there is a fab and genuinely moving trick in how it is constructed that i don't want to spoil! there is a huge amount of love for murder mysteries and what makes them work, how they function as stories but also what function they serve for readers - i think hegarty understands something very real about the psychological impulse to think about death in this campy and jovial way. lost steam for me in the final third once all the cards had been played so to speak, but still really recommend. would take this over "cosy crime" any day

I loved the start of this. I was intrigued by the premise and totally absorbed in Abigail’s preparations for the New Year/ birthday celebration. However, after the murder the setting changes with no explanation. This felt like two versions of the story hacked together with no editing. I got more confused as characters emerged and found this a difficult read.

Maybe I have a corrupt or draft version? This not a title for me!

Fair Play has an interesting concept but I don't think the execution lived up to the idea entirely.

The first part was very good, like reading an old school classic murder mystery- the old house, the group of friends, a murder and the arrival of a Poirot styled detective character.

After that I found it far too chaotic. Changes of setting, asides that lead nowhere and then a selection of resolutions, the last of which just irritated me. I could see what the author was trying to do but despite the writing being great, the story kind of fizzled out, going wherever it is great idea's go to die.

Despite that it was intriguing. I didn't hate it and indeed I'd read more from this author, it felt like a first attempt at something that will eventually be genius. Will wait to see what's next.

Abigail's brother Benjamin's birthday is on New Year's Day and so, to make it special they started a tradition of booking an AirBnB stay with a group of old friends and Abigail meticulously plans a murder mystery evening, loosely based around a theme. This year things are a bit tense, Benjamin has invited his PA Barbara of all people to join them, which won't go down well with his ex-fiance Margaret. Abigail is glad that Benjamin's school friend Stephen is coming alone, his girlfriend has gone home to Poland for Christmas, because she's always harboured a bit of a crush on him. Then there's another of Benjamin's old friends Cormac, and his newish girlfriend Olivia, and finally Declan, he grew up with Abigail and Benjamin but hasn't really grown-up, Abigail understands Benjamin has had to bail him out with money more than once. So they all meet up in this big old Irish house and drink champagne and play their murder mystery, but in the morning Benjamin is found dead, locked in his room. The police believe it's suicide but Abigail is sure its murder so she hires the renowned detective Augustus Bell to discover the truth. As another reader said, so far so good, although I found the writing style of the omnipotent narrator a bit irritating.

But then, the story changes, new characters are added, the house is no longer an AirBnB but Benjamin and Abigail's family home. New information is given about each of the characters (just like in a murder mystery game). The reader gets 'treated' to tracts of rules about classical murder mysteries (many of which have been flagrantly broken time and time again). Augustus Bell himself seems to know he is a character in a book as he often informs people that something will happen later ie in chapter sixteen I will ask three of the guests to try to climb into Benjamin's window, he also refers to previous cases by the sort of name they would be given in a Golden Age mystery. I also noted a fair few references to other detectives of the Golden Age eg (Lord Peter) Wimsey and Tommy and Tuppence.

So we now have two stories running in parallel, one an homage/send-up of a Golden Age mystery with overlapping characters but different stories (eg in one story Benjamin runs the family business whereas in the other he is merely an employee at a company). The formatting of the ARC didn't help as there were asterisks cross-referencing to footnotes relating actions/characters to mystery theories but sometimes they were several pages apart.

There were also some random passages where things were repeated but altered slightly five or six times on the trot, eg Abigail's recounting of how she and Benjamin spent Christmas.

(view spoiler)And then it just abruptly ends. No resolution of any description, people confess and then it seems Bell dismisses their confessions and accuses someone else.
This to me was just a hot mess. Some reviewers have raved about this as a study in coming to terms with loss, well I'm impressed that they found that from this hotchpotch of tales that go nowhere.

Also, what on earth does either the title or the cover have to do with the plot?

I received an ARC from the Publisher via NetGalley.

you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this ARC. This review is posted on Goodreads on October 1st.

What did I just read?

I don't even really know my feelings about this book (the end though...).
There's so many things I liked about this book but it didn't work as good as could have for me.

This book is a murder mystery and it's one of a kind. I, for sure, never read another book like this one.
There's three parts that are very distinct but follows the same character.
After reading the summary of this book I thought that I was going to read another mystery like Knives out, or some kind of Agatha Christie book, which I really like.
This book wasn't quite like that and it confused me very quickly, I was always so confuse about what was going on.

To talk about this book I feel like I have to talk about each part in a little more details ( but without spoilers as usual).
The first part was setting the scene and made us meet the main cast, the quick change of narrators was a little confusing but it worked.
The second part was absolutely confusing, I don't know what was going on but I was on for the ride, I wanted to know where this was going and I did like that detective. But I feel like as I was reading this wasn't really leading anywhere.
The third part disapointed me a lot, it felt like nothing was going anywhere and I was waiting for a lot more. This ending was super weird and I wasn't expecting that (but not in a good way)

So, I liked the idea, it was extremely original but it all fell flat in the end (a little before the thrid part started).
One point I really liked was the treatment of grieve, it was really really well written, it's probably why it's a 3 stars and not a 2.

‘Fair Play’ by Louise Hegarty is a unique and ingenious whodunnit which will leave you reeling, smirking and thinking. Telling the story of Abigail, who hires a grand old house and gathers together her brother Benjamin’s friends for a murder mystery party to celebrate his birthday. The eventful evening ends with the guests retiring to bed, but when the sun rises, Benjamin does not…

Thus begins a twisting, turning investigation which includes plenty of knowing references, multiple lightbulb moments and scandals galore, as well as some head-scratching that might leave you flipping back to check you read something correctly. With distinct and varied characters, a timeless setting, and all the right ingredients for a locked room mystery, the novel remains gripping throughout and introduces a strange fourth wall-breaking detective. I can’t say much more at this stage without spoilers!

I’m very torn about my rating for this one… as I read the last pages, I felt sad, amazed and frustrated, and I was left with a head full of thoughts that will stay with me for a while. Ultimately, I’m giving it four stars - it is definitely very accomplished and stylish for a debut, and worth savouring… even if you might feel like it’s not all quite fair play!

I received an advance Digital Review Copy of this book from the publisher Pan MacMillan via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Let's chat about "Fair Play" by Louise Hegarty. This book, from another amazing Irish author, will be available to buy on the 3rd of April 2025 and let me tell you - put your pre-order ASAP and in a proper paperback or hardback - you can thank me later.
At the beginning I was expecting just an old plain murder mystery, another version of whodunit but I was so so wrong.
There is a birthday party on New Year's Eve with traditional murder mystery game but when everyone wake up next morning it appears that someone is dead... There will be police officer, detective with his side kick and a lot of drama but let this not fool you.. This exceptional work is an excellent description of grief and ones way of dealing with it. It's a story of love, loyalty, mistakes and regrets. I can't imagine bravery of the author when she was approaching publishers as I don't think I've ever read anything even slightly similar to it and yet so compelling. Masterpiece in its form

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read an early copy of #FairPlay

Some novels simply defy categorization and Fair Play is one of them.
Mystery? Sure. There is a body, a quirky detective and his sidekick, suspects and red herrings- all the staples of the mystery novel genre, but what if I tell you that in reality this novel is about grief and processing it?
Let me explain:
First clue that this is something different is the entirety of Part One where we are introduced to characters and the event story revolves around- Benjamin's birthday/New Year celebration. Abigail, his sister is the organizer of the event and just like every year before, the theme of the party is a murder mystery where all of the invitees have role and try to solve the murder. But the morning after the party, Benjamin is dead. You see, the entire Part One is written in a dreaded omniscient point of view which, I guess, was bit of a writing experiment, but I'd say it's primary purpose is to set a stage.
Part Two opens with the arrival of famous detective Auguste Bell who is invited by Abigail to come and solve the mystery of how Benjamin died and who is responsible. Intersected with chapters of Bell's investigation are chapters of Abigail's life in the aftermath of Benjamin's death.
Simply put, the part with the detective is a satire of the Golden Age mystery genre and locked room genre in particular.

"To the average observer, it may have seemed as though Auguste Bell did nothing more than walk from the motorcar to the front door of the house. But anyone who knew the detective would tell you that he had already made half a dozen observations on that short journey."


Established and made popular by John Dickinson Carr, locked room genre was always the type of mystery more preoccupied with "how the murder was committed" than "who is the culprit." How did the murder happen when the door are locked from the inside in a windowless room? And the ingenuity of the genre is in the most inventive and insane ways authors come up with to explain the impossible murder, and yes, things can get ridiculous. So, in this novel detective Bell is a blended version of Gideon Fell and Poirot as he investigates the murder of Benjamin and we have no idea how we even came to the part where it is a murder at all or why the suspects/witnesses just go with his instruction not to leave the house until he comes to a conclusion nor how police inspector just shows up at the house to inform Bell of something important. Bell often breaks the forth wall reminding reader of the observation he made in chapter 17 or of the fact that his sidekick has to be slightly less intelligent than the average reader, something his sidekick Sacker would get offended by if he didn't lack intelligence to realize. :)
The purpose of this is two-fold, as I think Hegarty had a blast poking fun at the genre she is clearly familiar with and likes. But the way I understood this is that entire detective part was just Abigail's way to deal with the death of her brother. We are told from the beginning that she is very close to her brother and she loves him a lot because he is the only family she's left. She loves organizing birthdays for him and she tries to out-do herself every year by coming up with more elaborate mysteries for guests to solve. She reads about it and researches all the rules of locked room mysteries be it T. S. Eliot’s rules in ‘Homage to Wilkie Collins' or S. S. Van Dine’s 'Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories' which are all real resources. There is a certain comfort in following rules and I think that Abigail deals with initial shock of her brother's death in her head by putting it into familiar frame of locked-room mystery and it's well-known trajectory with rules. This is why the detective part of the story is more than often nonsensical and disjointed from things like condolences notes and Abigail's return to work scene. Just take the part with multiple endings: the notion is that in the locked room mystery everyone can be made culprit if the detective presents it and he explains the motive and the modus operandi, but in real life people often have a jerk reaction to blame it on someone or something to understand why until, in time, they come to realization that it doesn't really matter because the person you love is not here. This is the process Abigail goes through as she tries to deal with her brother's death.
I love when authors decide to do something risky for their debut novel, no matter how successful it ends up. This novel is a writing experiment and I loved the intention behind it if not really the execution. I almost quit as I was reading Part One because omniscient view is tricky to pull and I was not a fan. Satire was also a bit too on the nose sometimes and in my opinion, it got in the way of the real message.

All in all, this was interesting.
By broadest definition, mystery is "something that's impossible or hard to understand or explain" and in that sense this novel deals with that. What is harder to understand and explain than the sudden death of beloved person in your life?

Abigail organizes their friend group's annual New Year's Eve party which then morphs into her brother Benjamin's birthday party the following day. This year's theme is a murder mystery party and Abigail has spread out the clues all over the Airbnb they rented for the weekend. Everyone has fun, the night ends well. But the next day, they find Benjamin dead in his room. From this point, the story turns into a murder mystery in the vein of Golden Age detective stories, and famous consulting detective Aguste Bell arrives on the scene to solve the murder. But can he, and by extension Abigail, find the answers to this mystery?

✨

I am a fan of Agatha Christie's novels, so when I read the blurb for Fair Play I was automatically interested in reading the book. Benjamin's death presents a locked room mystery, and a group of friends with various motives and secrets presents the perfect pool of suspects for renowned detective Auguste Bell.

There is a catch though. This book actually has a dual narrative, with chapters alternating between Bell's Golden Age detective sleuthing and Abigail's present-day grief in the aftermath of her brother's death. And I loved this concept, this take on making sense of the grief and loss through a murder mystery.

Auguste Bell's chapters take us back to the past, pre-internet and pre-cellphones. The Airbnb becomes an estate, and a butler, a housekeeper, and a part-time gardener are added to the mix. His chapters are very tongue-in-cheek, often breaking the fourth wall, addressing the readers and calling out references to the various rules of detective mysteries set forth by various other writers. Bell also points out that some events will be revealed in future chapters. Aside from the meta elements, these chapters are very reminiscent of our favorite Agathe Christie novels.

Contrast that with Abigail's chapters. Her narrative is rooted in mundane reality. Her brother is dead, and she is expected to live her life and go back to her normal routines. But she can't because she is drowning in grief and nothing else seems to matter as much as it did before. Compared to Bell's fun and lighthearted chapters, Abigail's is bleak and distant. The tone shift is done really well in my opinion, and we really hone in on how Abigail's grief has a dulling effect on her, and everything just feels so distant and unimportant to her.

Abigail attempts to make sense of Benjamin's death, using Bell and the murder-mystery narrative to find the answers she so desperately wants. When death is sudden and unexpected, we are often left wondering why it happened and if there was anything we missed that could have changed things. But as Abigail's therapist says, sometimes we won't ever find *the truth* but we will come to find *a truth*. And that sometimes life demands that that should be enough.

The final chapter of this book was so sweet and sad. It painted a picture of how close Benjamin and Abigail were, and how he felt as the older brother.

I came for the murder mystery and stayed for the feels.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the digital ARC.

It's been a while since I actively disliked a book this much. First of all, the first chapter reads like a shopping list, or maybe someone giving a statement just recapping actions without getting emotional about it. It was dry, just listing out things, boring, no insight or depth. But I persevered because I wanted to at least get to the "murder mystery dinner" part. I thought, maybe when the conversation starts flowing, it will get better.

🤨🤨🤨

It did not. Part 1 remained dry and boring and almost pointless as we did not really get to be part of the murder mystery dinner. We meet our characters, but we don't really get to know them.

Part 2 is where it gets really confusing, but maybe the formatting has a lot to answer for here. And mind you, I read it as an ARC, so I hope that by the time this hits the shelves, it will be formatted in a way that makes more sense.
Because of this weird formatting, some paragraphs were inserted in the middle of a different paragraph, words in the middle of the page, and it was generally distracting for the flow of the story. It took me a while to realise that there are two stories running parallel to each other.
Even then, there is no real depth to any of the characters. I did not care for Abigail AT ALL. I couldn't care less how she dealt with her grief and how she went on with her life after losing Benjamin. She didn't impress me as a hostess, she didn't impress me as a friend or sister. I just felt nothing.
What pissed me off the most, is the ending. What even was the Part 3?!?!

The novel begins with a group of friends attending a Murder Mystery weekend on New Years Eve. Unfortunately, it turns into a real-life tragedy.
Uniquely told breaking the 4th wall when a well renowned detective and his side-kick turn up to try to solve the murder.
At times I found the two parallel stories a confusing and disorientating read, mixing the present day with a golden age mystery. I had to keep stopping and rereading. The chapters explaining the rules of writing a mystery novel and what to include/ not to include, was weird and broke the flow of the story for me.
This book was well written and different to anything I have ever read before.
Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley UK for the ARC.

A fun, unique and inventive novel. Fair Play by Louise Hegarty is hard to define, part-murder mystery reminiscent of Agatha Christie with some interesting meta-elements. I loved that it was a detective novel that knows it’s a detective novel with the fourth wall breaks really bringing something unique and fun. For most of this book, I had this pegged as my top read of the year, it was that interesting and fresh, however the later half of the book brought it down for me. Maybe it just went over my head, or didn’t live up to the high expectations I’d set thus far, but nonetheless this one is worth reading. Highly recommend.