The new novel 'Fair Play' is a self-aware take on the golden age of detective fiction
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Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. A couple weeks back in the Book of the Day newsletter, which you should subscribe to, by the way. It's a fun time over there. I wrote a post about how mystery, crime, and thriller books are super popular, particularly among women. And I got a huge chunk of readers emailing me back saying, listen, I love mystery books and not crime and thriller novels. Or I don't care for thrillers, but what I do love are golden age mystery novels.

So first off, my bad. Maybe mysteries shouldn't be grouped in with thrillers. Secondly, for all of you Golden Age mystery lovers, today's episode is for you. It's an interview between NPR's Ayesha Roscoe and author Louise Hegarty, whose new novel, Fair Play, is very much in this tradition. That's ahead.

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For the presidency, I'm indebted to Almighty God. I'm in charge of the country, and I need to serve all the American people and not just the political machine. The origins of the modern civil service. Listen to ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts. In the new novel Fair Play, two things can be true.

Abigail can be hosting a New Year's Eve murder mystery dinner party at an Airbnb. In this envelope, you will find a character carriage, which gives you information that no one else knows. You will see that there are specific instructions. Abigail can also be in deep mourning for Benjamin, her only sibling. Our sincere condolences to Abigail on the tragic and sudden passing of your dear brother.

Fair Play is the debut novel of Irish author Louise Hegarty. It honors the golden age of crime novels just as it turns the genre on its head. She joins us now to talk about it. Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here. So when we first meet Abigail, I mean, it seems like a setup for like this typical murder mystery. And I've kind of gotten into cozy murder mysteries now. I like them. I like them.

You know, you have the usual elements. It's a country house, a gathering of friends and associates and, you know, someone who you don't know very well. Can you tell us more about how your novel begins? So it begins, they have gathered together at a country house to ring in the new year, but they're also there to celebrate their friend Benjamin's birthday. His sister Abigail has devised a murder mystery game that they all play.

The next morning, everyone wakes except for Benjamin. And then you have this great detective who shows up, August Bell. How would you describe his contributions to the story and the plot of the story?

Yeah, so August Bell, we first meet him in part two of the book and he kind of suddenly springs up out of nowhere. And he's very much in that vein of like a Hercule Poirot type of detective. And he's there to facilitate Abigail. She's trying to uncover the clues around her brother's death.

And it's also about providing her with kind of a comforting pathway through that and a comforting narrative that she's familiar with.

Because she's a big fan of detective novels. So much of the way August Bell talks is like, he's very blunt about this is the way murder mysteries work. These are the rules. And then he also goes on page 23, I said this. I'm not going to get to this, to chapter 22. Like, it's meta, right? Like, what made you decide...

to put together the book in that way and to wink at the audience that way.

The idea of having a detective in a murder mystery who is aware that he is a detective in a murder mystery novel and he's aware of the tropes of the genre and it's all kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge at the reader. It's a playful take on a murder mystery and using that structure to look at the emotions around grief and around sudden death.

I suppose I was thinking a lot about those original Golden Age detective novels. I mean, that period between the wars where people were coming out of the First World War, dealing with a huge amount of trauma, who were grieving and looking for familiar narratives as a comfort.

And so ultimately, that is what Abigail is doing. It's a lot going on because you have like the murder mystery of like who killed Abigail's brother, Benjamin. And then you also have the mystery of like Abigail's brain, like the story that she's telling herself. I wanted you to read this part where she's thinking about her last Christmas with her brother, which is just a few days before his death.

And then over the next, like, few pages...

Abigail keeps repeating and then striking through and repeating and adding details and subtracting details. And she's replaying it over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of it. Where did you get this idea from? Has this happened to you? You know, I think we've probably all lost somebody and we've all grieved. And it is that kind of normal thing that you do, that you look back at things

The last time you saw them or kind of recent visits with them and you start examining everything that they did suddenly becomes a very important thing. You start looking for clues as to...

what was going on for them or what was happening. Abigail, she's kind of stuck in examining this last Christmas with her brother in minute detail, hoping that she'll remember something where everything that happened after that will suddenly make sense. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting because murder mysteries, you're often not dealing with the grief of the murder or the pain of the murder. It's just like it's a puzzle to be solved. This book kind of forces you to deal with that other hard part. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a big fan of those detective novels myself. And

The characters in them, you know, people are dropping dead all around them and they don't really seem that pushed. You know, there's not a huge amount of grieving for people who died. And from the reader's point as well, like, I'm never that upset when someone dies in a murder mystery because that's the point of them. And I mean, there is that kind of puzzle to be solved. And they're a form of escapism as well. It makes me wonder, like, are fair play mysteries kind of like the horror stories that I like?

a way to consider mortality in a safe way and a fun way because there are rules like you can't have supernatural happenings. It can't just be an accident. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think...

Death is kind of the one thing. I mean, we will never figure out that mystery. And as people, what we do is assign narratives and stories to our lives in order to make sense of them. I think the idea of trying to make sense of death is such a large part of human existence. That's Louise Hegarty. Her debut novel is Fair Play. Thank you so much for talking with us today. Oh, thank you so much.

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