Fair Play by Louise Hegarty (HC)

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

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 . . .

Louise Hegarty's Fair Play is the puzzle-box story that brilliantly lays bare the real truth of life - the terrifying mystery of grief.

REVIEWS

"A brilliant dissection of the murder mystery format, chopping between Bell’s old-school (and very meta) investigation, and Abigail’s raw grief. Both funny and moving, it’s a really impressive debut." - The Times

"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

"It takes skill, and even a sense of anarchy, to produce a novel as funny, baffling and occasionally moving as Fair Play' - John Boyne, The Irish Times

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback 
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-1035036134
Pages: 288