Fair Play

A Novel

By: Louise Hegarty

Narrated by: Andrew Wincott, Aoife McMahon

“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

For fans of Anthony Horowitz and Lucy Foley, a wonderfully original, genre-breaking literary debut from Ireland that’s an homage to the brilliant detective novels of the early twentieth century, a twisty modern murder mystery, and a searing exploration of grief and loss.

A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year’s Eve. It is Benjamin’s birthday, and his sister Abigail is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d’oeuvres consumed, and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else’s heart is broken.

In the morning, all of them wake up—except Benjamin.

As Abigail attempts to wrap her mind around her brother’s death, an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin's killer. In this mansion, suddenly complete with a butler, gardener and housekeeper, everyone is a suspect, and nothing is quite as it seems.

Will the culprit be revealed? And how can Abigail, now alone, piece herself back together in the wake of this loss?

Gripping and playful, sharp and profoundly moving, Fair Play plumbs the depths of the human heart while subverting one of our most popular genres.

A better physical book than audiobook

The creative bending of the genre did not lend itself to an audio version. The narrator was strong, but the actual presentation of the story would have worked better on the page.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been an audiobook.

I was intrigued by the ‘genre bending’ label but on audio it just felt repetitive and confusing. The book ended while I was driving and frankly I didn’t notice. Maybe the print version would work but I was so uninterested by the end that I never went back to try to understand what happened.

What even is this?

No idea what I just read. Maybe I’m not smart enough to get the intent of this book, but I found the premise utterly confusing.

Terrible reading

Silly story , incapable if writing an ending. Very disappointing . To be avoided. A waste of time

Can’t believe I spent my credit on this

The author has great imagination and narrating top notch but the campiness of it just too over the top.