‘This is a murder mystery.
This is a story about love.
Or is it? . . .’
– Fair Play
[ About Fair Play ]
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 . . .
[ My Review ]
Fair Play by Louise Hegarty published April 3rd with Picador and is described as ‘a puzzle-box story that brilliantly lays bare the real truth of life – the terrifying mystery of grief.‘ I picked up a copy of Fair Play a few weeks back in preparation for the upcoming Kinsale Literary Festival 2025 with a view to reading it in advance of my chat with Louise. What I was not expecting was to find myself exploring further the meaning of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ and what the term metafiction actually means.
Fair Play takes place in a large house rented by Abigail, her brother Benjamin, and a group of friends, with the intention of celebrating Benjamin’s birthday and New Year’s Eve. Abigail is central to organising this get-together and decides on a murder mystery theme in the tradition of the Golden Age detective. All guests are asked to don their best jazz themed attire and to be prepared to be fully immersed in the fun and games.
The night is not without its bumps but most of the friends are willing to step into their allotted roles leaving Abigail pleased that the New Year, and Benjamin’s birthday, were celebrated appropriately. But the following morning everything changes when there is no sign of Benjamin. When he is discovered dead in his bedroom Abigail is distraught and has to face a new reality.
It’s at this point where the novel makes a bold move and asks for the reader to participate in a locked-room mystery with a Sherlock Holmes and Watson type of duo arriving on the premises in a reimagining of Abigail’s life. A household is invented with questions being asked and scenarios considered as the house comes to terms with this ‘suspicious’ death. Interchangeable chapters dive back and forth between Abigail’s reality of dealing with her grief and this alternate world, with stage dialogue and reader participation. Sounds bizarre I know but it’s actually very innovative and entertaining, while also sensitively handling the theme of grief and all the pain it carries with it. Breaking the fourth wall is a tactic used by Louise Hegarty by asking the reader to actively engage, incorporating them into the story, which for me was definitely a completely different experience.
Fair Play is an inventive and refreshingly different debut. Louise Hegarty plays with many different styles treating her readers to something quite creative in what Paul Murray describes as ‘genre-splicing’. A very unique reading experience, Louise Hegarty tackles grief with an experimental approach making Fair Play a very original concept.
[ Bio ]
Louise Hegarty’s stories have appeared in Banshee, The Tangerine, The Stinging Fly and The Dublin Review and have been featured on BBC Radio 4. She was the inaugural winner of the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Ireland Short Story Prize and recently her story ‘Now, Voyager’ was produced as part of A City and A Garden, a new state-of-the-art sonic experience commissioned by Sounds from a Safe Harbour in association with Body & Soul and presented as part of Brightening Air | Coiscéim Coiligh. Her short story ‘Getting the Electric’, originally published in The Stinging Fly, has been optioned by Fíbín Media.
Fair Play is her debut novel.
