Louise Hegarty’s debut, Fair Play, had such an intriguing premise I put up my hand as soon as I spotted it on NetGalley. She’s also a Stinging Fly contributor which always sways me in an author’s favour. For several years Abigail has arranged a murder mystery weekend to celebrate her brother’s birthday which falls on New Year’s Day. This year’s turns out to be very different.
All this information would gently stew in his brain until eventually – around Chapter Twenty-Three – the solution would come bubbling to the surface.
Abigail prides herself on the success of these weekends, painstakingly assembling clues for their guests to find. This year’s theme is Jazz Age Detective, appropriate for the beautifully restored 1920s country house she’s rented. As usual everyone’s late, not least Benjamin and his ex, Margaret. By the time they arrive, Stephen, Declan, Cormac and Olivia are settling in, all friends of Benjamin and Abigail, two since childhood, together with Benjamin’s work friend Barbara who no one else has met. They’re unusually close for a brother and sister having already lost both parents. Once the crime is solved, the friends take themselves off to bed some drunker than others. Next morning, there’s no sign of Benjamin: his bedroom door is locked with no sound within. The group are horrified to discover that their friend and brother has died in the night aged only thirty-three. The police arrive, then, oddly, a celebrated detective turns up called in by Abigail to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.
I just thought that there could be multiple lies here. Unrelated lies. A cover-up that isn’t really covering anything up.
Hegarty’s novel starts with a straightforward narrative, establishing relationships, scattering a few red herrings before turning into a pastiche locked room mystery interspersed with Abigail’s struggles to accept her brother’s death. Quite a risky idea for any novel, let alone a debut, but, overall, it worked for me. Hegarty has a lot of fun with the genre, laying out sets of rules from T. S. Eliot, Father Knox and S. S. Van Dine and modelling her detective on Poirot with a dash of Sherlock Holmes. Abigail’s attempts to understand what’s happened and her discovery that she knew less than she thought she did about her brother’s life provide some depth to the novel. The combination of the two is disconcerting at first but eventually its purpose becomes clear. There seems to be a bit of a trend in cosy crime pastiche or perhaps homage – Kate Atkinson’s Death at the Sign of the Rook and Jonathan Coe’s The Proof of My Innocence both include more than a few nods to it. I enjoyed Hegarty’s playful witty contribution; I wonder what she’ll come up with next.
Picador Books London 9781035036134 288 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)
So long as it’s a pastiche of Cosy Crime, I’m in. CC per se just doesn’t do it for me.
Only occasionally on TV for me.
I spotted this one at the start of the year and was also intrigued by the premise. Must check it out.
I’ll be interested in what you think, Cathy. There were a few sticky moments for me but I thought it worked well on the whole.
This sounds fun! Golden age crime is my comfort read (not so much the modern CC although it seems to be booming genre right now) so I think I’d enjoy the pastiche here.
I’m sure you’d get all the references that passed over my head.
I found your review very intriguing. I’m both tempted and uncertain! There does indeed seem to be a theme of GA crime innovation recently – just yesterday Christopher Brookmyre’s novel, The Cracked Mirror was the audible deal of the day – and I feel torn. I love GA crime and when it’s done well it’s excellent. I have given up on so many novels that were promised to be for fans of Agatha Christie and really no one can do Christie other than the author herself. I also read an extract of Kate Atkinson’s novel and found it a bit stodgy. I will look out for this in a shop where I can surreptitiously read the first chapter and see how it sits with me!
That sounds like a good plan. Tricky to say too much about this one as there’s a big reveal, which some might not appreciate, and I wouldn’t want to give the game away.
I struggle with both Golden Age and cosy crime but I do like the premise of this.
Me, too, but this one has an interesting spin on the genre.
Sounds charming. Thoroughly enjoyed reading your review. I find I’m enjoying crime novels more than any other genre at present, but I’m mostly caught up in a project of reading short stories in old New Yorker magazines lately. They’re incredible and with some new discoveries!
Thank you, Jennifer. That sounds like a fascinating project. Do the magazines cover a long period of time?
The long answer is… I’d been hoarding paper copies of the New Yorker under my bed. I ran out of room down there and made of them a stack beneath a little desk in the bedroom. My daughter thought it looked pretty cool, but my husband, aware that we are running out of space for my reading material 🙂 asked if I was ever going to read these beauties that run from the start of 2017 through the end of 2020. So! On my St. Patrick’s Day birthday, I started reading and eliminating them. It’s been incredible so and I’m only getting started. The short fiction from William Trevor, Samanta Schweblin, a guy called Victor Lodato I had never heard of whose short story blew my mind. It’s an embarrassment of riches! xx
That’s wonderful! Lots of great reading ahead for you. I think they’re following in a long tradition. William Maxwell was the fiction editor of the New Yorker, wasn’t he.
Yes, he was their fiction editor for many years. Maxwell made the careers of many writers, including Mavis Gallant, who started out by sending three stories to the New Yorker, two of which he published straightaway in spite of her being complete unknown.
What a fun cover with the fingers crossed (and SUCH bold colours)!
It’s certainly eye-catching!