Fair Play by Louise Hegarty

*I have tried not to include any spoilers in this review and have kept to the level of detail that is included in the official synopsis.

Fair Play begins like a traditional murder mystery: a group of friends gather in a remote house for a birthday celebration organised by Abigail, only for one of them to end up dead the following morning. This is where the novel switches gear as we are introduced to a cast of characters strongly resembling those we have already met, but with sweeping and unexplained changes to their circumstances together with several additional characters, not least the esteemed detective, Auguste Bell.

 The shift is disorientating and quite unsettling, particularly as Hegarty pauses the plot to insert the ‘rules of writing murder mysteries’ into the narrative. The novel then alternates between the highly meta murder mystery, complete with all manner of crime-fiction conventions, and glimpses of Abigail’s life beyond that fateful night as she tries to cope with the grief that is overwhelming her.

If you’re expecting a traditional whodunnit with neat answers and tidy resolutions, this probably isn’t the book for you and you may even find the ending frustrating. But if you enjoy fiction that plays around with genre and uses the comfortably familiar structure of crime novels as a way of exploring complicated emotions and the messiness of grief and loss, it offers something quite different and hauntingly moving.

Richard