Fair Play by Louise Hegarty

 

When a group of friends gather in a country house to celebrate New Year's Eve and a birthday, the last thing they expect is for one of them to be dead by morning.

Fair Play by Louise Hegarty is an unusual read, it's a "mash-up" of a couple of different genres. The opening has a modern setting with a group of eight friends making their way to Yew Tree House, a country house they have hired through Airbnb for a combined celebration. It's New Year's Eve and the following day is the birthday of Benjamin, one of the group and sister of Abigail, the organiser. The joint celebration is something the group has done regularly.

Everything goes as normal on New Year's Eve, it's the following morning when things take a turn. Benjamin is late putting in an appearance. When they try to rouse him they discover the door to his bedroom is locked from the inside. Breaking down the door they discover Benjamin is dead.

It's at this point that the story departs from the norm, what follows is two distinctly different timelines. In the modern setting, we follow Abigail as she tries to come to terms with her brother's suicide. I was filled with sympathy as she had to navigate dealing with his funeral as both of their parents are dead. Grief is combined with guilt as Abigail questions why she didn't spot any signs regarding Benjamin's mental health. When she talks to the friends who were present that weekend she is disheartened to find that they didn't know Benjamin's state of mind either.

The other timeline is that of classic British detective fiction. The setting is the same, along with the main characters, but the time period feels old, along the lines of a 1930s murder mystery. The police are convinced Benjamin has committed suicide, however, the consulting detective, Auguste Bell, engaged by Abigail is convinced it is murder, a locked room murder! What follows is a typical murder mystery, even down to laying out the rules for this type of story. All the suspects are gathered together in one room, the detective has a less intelligent foil, Bell isn't prepared to discuss his suspicions until all clues are gathered and the big reveal takes place. There is almost a "fourth wall" aspect as Bell refers to events that will happen in later chapters.

I felt as if I was reading two distinctly different books. I found myself absorbed by the modern version of Abigail's story, empathetic towards her struggle to understand why her brother had taken his own life. While the detective fiction was cleverly done, I couldn't see its relevance to the overall story.

Fair Play by Louise Hegarty will be published on 3rd April 2025 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Picador for a review copy.

Author Details

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.