Fair Play

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

As soon as I finished this fiendishly elegant jigsaw puzzle of a book, I dashed back and scoured its pages trying to find if Hegarty had planted a glinting, hidden clue somewhere to unlock the mysteryThe Sunday Times

'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, 'Best Books of 2025 So Far'

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 themColin Walsh, author of Kala