Fair Play, Louise Hegarty
I’ve never read anything quite like Fair Play and can’t believe it’s a debut novel. Although it’s best to go into this book knowing as little as possible, all I will say is that it’s about a group of friends spending New Year’s Eve in an Airbnb to celebrate Benjamin’s birthday. When everyone except Benjamin wakes up on New Year’s Day, they call in a professional detective, Auguste Bell, to help solve the case. What starts off as a Knives-Out-esque mystery soon evolves into a brilliantly unique piece of literary fiction. There was no second when I wasn’t trying to get glimpses of the characters, outsmart them to solve the case for myself before it would be solved for me.
While there seemed to be certain elements that didn’t fit together – with the discrepancies in the story being mirrored in literary rules that are broken –the book evolves into something I did not see coming. Louise Hegarty has clearly studied the detective genre impeccably and, in her hands, we feel safe in an odd kind of knowledge that, even when things are starting to feel a bit muddled, the narrative is actually developing into something more significant, and we trust her completely to lead us to a gratifying conclusion.
The story guides us through something that is equal parts entertaining and devastating. What’s most impressive though, is how beautifully Hegarty handles both the fun moments and the heartbreaking ones. The shift between the two is undetectable but hits at impressive speed, as the prose mirrors these contrasting feelings. Although at first, I kept picking this book up in anticipation for the fun reveal, I soon found myself staying up late with the biggest lump in my throat, and I wasn’t even mad about it.
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