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

Fair Play is the puzzle-box story of two competing tales that brilliantly lay bare the real truth of life - the terrifying mystery of grief.

'Dazzling, formally subversive, brimming with compassion' - Colin Walsh, author of Kala

'Sad, funny, clever, engrossing; this is a wonderful debut.' - Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

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 . . .

'A dark, twisting, dismantling work . . . I've never read anything like it' - Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters

'A triumph' - Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies

About the Author
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 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 | Coisceim Coiligh. Fair Play is her debut novel.

Reviews
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
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
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
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



Book Information
ISBN 9781035036134
Author Louise Hegarty
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Picador
Publisher Pan Macmillan