Fair Play

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

Acts as both witty deconstruction of a genre and portrait of unbearable grief and loss

Financial Times

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

Hegarty follows the conventions of all the great traditional mysteries . . . and then twists them. Fair Play is set in a rural Irish country home, an Airbnb rented by a group of friends to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a murder-mystery theme party. When a guest is found dead the next morning, the friends are thrown into an investigation that references all the classic detective plot devices in such a twisty way that you’ll discover there are many more questions (and, eventually, answers) than you first realized

Elle, The Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2025

. . .full of knowing asides and tricksy fun; the other a painfully realistic account from the point of view of the victim’s sister, lonely and confounded by grief. The result is an ingenious take on how we make sense of both life and death

The Guardian

One of the cleverest debuts of recent years . . . [Hegarty keeps] the reader on their toes right until the last'

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