Fair Play by Louise Hegarty

Review by Max Dunbar

Mystery Night

I never worked out the appeal of murder mystery nights. Sure, you get to raid the dressing-up box but the practicalities must be a nightmare. How do you decide which person is the murderer, the victim and the detective? Won’t guests argue about who gets to be which? How do you make your guests stay in character, keep them from revealing the knowledge that only they are supposed to have? What happens when the corpse gets bored and goes for a cigarette somewhere?

Needless to say I never organised a murder mystery night. And if I did it would turn out like ‘Ham Radio’.

The mystery night in Louise Hegarty’s Fair Play goes very well. Abigail has been doing this for years as a birthday present for her brother Benjamin, to whom she seems devoted. We begin with her prep, which is extensive. ‘She really enjoyed creating all the clues: a crumpled-up love letter made to look old by dipping it in tea like she’d done as a child; an old-fashioned ticket stub for a theatre performance; and a cheap handkerchief which she had sewn initials on. Then there is the murder weapon itself: a champagne bottle to which she had carefully applied a set of fingerprint stickers.’ She has hired a country house on AirBnB.

The evening itself is a success, with only the odd bum note. Everyone dresses up and has posh drinks and a fabulous meal. The murder mystery game goes off without a hitch. The only real downer is the morning after, when the guests find Benjamin dead in his room.

At that point the novel separates into two separate stories. The first is an old-fashioned detective novel with a list of characters and several lengthy strictures on the form of murder mysteries: TS Eliot’s rules in New Criterion, SS Van Dine’s ‘Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories’. Abigail and her guests are translated into 1920s Golden Age archetypes who are questioned in turn by a brilliant, Poirot-style ‘consulting detective’. Everything seems to be barrelling nicely toward a solution.

The second story is Abigail in the aftermath of Benjamin’s death. While the old school murder mystery demonstrates a conventional form, Abigail’s present day narrative spins out dreary passages of endless time in relentless prose. You see this even in the book’s first chapter, which is all about the laughter and fun of Benjamin’s birthday party:

Occasionally, Abigail will point someone in the right direction if they need it or to keep the game tipping along. She points Barbara towards the pocket watch hidden behind the clock in the sitting room and Barbara is congratulated by everyone on her discovery. On the back of the watch, Abigail has taped an inscription that says My love, R. ‘You again,’ Cormac says to Olivia. Olivia checks her card. ‘No, it says here that my initials are MW. It can’t be me.’ Cormac turns then to Stephen. ‘God, you certainly manage to get around,’ he says. ‘Oh, I’m bad with names, can someone tell me who has the initial R?’ ‘I’m Angela North,’ says Barbara, ‘so it’s definitely not me.’ They all turn to Margaret then. ‘A lady never tells,’ she replies. ‘You absolute minx!’ Cormac says with a laugh.

There are no breaks for dialogue, and this absence is used later to disturbing effect:

Abigail keeps waiting for the HR person to step in and stop this show, but he doesn’t. Does he think this is going well? This is the problem with men. He was never going to step in to stop Clara’s wailing. He doesn’t know how to deal with it. ‘I really don’t need this,’ Abigail says to him as Clara blows her nose. ‘I’m under enough stress as it is.’ ‘Oh no,’ wails Clara. And then collapses into floods of tears again. ‘Do you want to step outside?’ Abigail suggests. ‘Do you want to go and compose yourself and then when you’re ready you can come back in?’ ‘Clara is very upset,’ says the HR person. ‘I understand that she has recently lost someone too.’ ‘That was over two years ago,’ says Abigail. ‘That’s not what this is about.’

Initially, the country-house mystery dominates the book. Chapters and chapters of the Golden Age detective, Auguste Bell, as he interviews servants, spars with his foolish sidekick and paces the grounds enigmatically. The similarities between the two stories are in the class notes. Benjamin’s old friend Declan is under suspicion in the 1920s story and the 2020s story. He’s crass and obnoxious, stuck in an early twenties mindset, and doesn’t quite fit in with the grownups: Abigail has heard that ‘Declan had been rejected for a mortgage because of his frequent use of gambling apps had been revealed in his bank statements.’ In both timelines Abigail is embarrassed by her aunt. In the Bell story she is an overbearing Wodehousian creature who barges into the country house uninvited. ‘You were always so rational, even as a child. Always needing an explanation for everything,’ she tells Abigail. ‘But you can’t stay in here for ever. You will have to rejoin the real world at some stage.’

The real enigma in Fair Play is Benjamin. The other characters are deeply committed to him in life and death and we’re never sure why. None is more devoted than Abigail, and she’s constantly running around and planning and doing things for him. Abigail has perfected the art of living for others. Without Benjamin she has to struggle to find her own voice.

Hegarty has interrogated the conventions of storytelling to a powerful impact, and while her novel can have the effect of making experimental fiction seem itself conventional, you never doubt the essential humanity and kindness of her vision. It is a mystery of what remains mysterious when the ending has long since been revealed.

Max’s blog can be found here.

Louise Hegarty, Fair Play, (Picador, 2025). 978-1035036134,288 pp., hardback.

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