Fair Play

Author Louise Hegarty
Narrator Andrew Wincott, Aoife McMahon
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Run Time 7 hours and 52 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Comic (humorous) crime and mystery, Crime and mystery fiction, Fiction: general and literary, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Interior life.

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What to expect

‘A TREAT' - Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting
‘DAZZLING' - Colin Walsh, author of Kala
‘BRILLIANT' - The Times
‘INGENIOUS’ - The Telegraph
'TERRIFIC' - The New York Times
'HEARTBREAKING' - The Guardian
‘SALLY ROONEY MEETS THE SECRET HISTORY’ - The Sunday Times

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

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 . . .

Louise Hegarty's Fair Play is the puzzle-box story that brilliantly lays bare the real truth of life - the terrifying mystery of grief.

Critics Review

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

Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting

As soon as I finished this fiendishly elegant jigsaw puzzle of a book, I dashed back and scoured its pages trying to find if Hegarty had planted a glinting, hidden clue somewhere to unlock the mystery

The Sunday Times

A brilliant dissection of the murder mystery format . . . Both funny and moving, it’s a really impressive debut

The Times, 'Best Books of 2025 So Far'

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

Colin Walsh, author of Kala

It takes skill, and even a sense of anarchy, to produce a novel as funny, baffling and occasionally moving as Fair Play

The Irish Times

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.

Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters

An ingenious puzzle-box of a novel . . . Sad, funny, clever, engrossing; this is a wonderful debut.

Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

Undoubtedly the most original crime novel you’ll read all year

The Guardian

[An] ingenious debut novel

The Telegraph

A witty, knowing homage to classic detective fiction, but also a deeply sensitive examination of the loneliness and confusion of grief

The New York Times

Fair Play is ambitious and unpredictable and riotous and at the same time full of meaning and compassion. It's a triumph

Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies

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

Jodie Harsh, author of You Had To Be There

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

Andrew McMillan, author of Pity

A smart, intricately plotted novel

iNews

I loved it . . . intriguing, smart, fun, and devastatingly poignant . . . I shall now read everything Louise Hegarty ever writes

Effie Black, author of In Defence of the Act

In crime novels, a death is often merely the inciting incident. Murder gets the party started, so to speak. Grief, the monster in the shadows that keeps you awake at night, rarely features. That Louise Hegarty has not only upended the genre, but combined this with a moving exploration of loss, makes this inventive debut all the more impressive

Irish Independent

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

Catherine Kirwan, author of Cruel Deeds

'A fantastical locked room mystery'

PA Review

Fair Play shows how the true mysteries of death and life can elude the consolations of genre fiction . . . Fair play, indeed

The Wall street Journal

Amazing . . . a really modern, interesting, bizarre take on the murder mystery . . . It’s brilliant

LA Times

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