Q&A With Louise Hegarty

Louise Hegarty is the author of the debut mystery novel, Fair Play who I’m delighted to be doing this Q&A with! Louise has had work appear in the publications Banshee, The Tangerine, The Stinging Fly, & The Dublin Review & has been featured on BBC 4’s Short Works. Louise’s short story Getting The Electric has been optioned by Fibin Media. 

Q: Louise, would you please give a brief description of Fair Play? 

A: Fair Play begins on New Year’s Eve 2022. A group of friends have gathered at a house in the Irish countryside to celebrate their friend Benjamin’s birthday and to ring in the New Year. They spend the night eating, drinking and playing a murder mystery game devised by Benjamin’s sister Abigail. The next morning, everyone awakes except Benjamin. Abigail then suddenly finds herself staring in a murder mystery of her own while she tries desperately to uncover the facts around her brother’s death. 

Q: On the back of the book, the blurb mentioned fans of Anthony Horowitz and Tana French would enjoy this book. I also noticed that this book is also great for people who are fans of Agatha Christie & Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels. Did you go into writing this using inspiration from Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Anthony Horowitz and Tana French? 

A: My novel plays a lot with the detective genre. I use the fair play doctrine – the concept that the reader should have “a sporting chance to solve the mystery” – together with the familiar structure of a Golden Age detective novel to explore the emotions around death and grief. I took a lot of inspiration from classic detective novels by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, and the book is full of Easter eggs and references to characters like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. 

Q: How long did it take you to write Fair Play? 

A: I wrote the first draft in about three months. I then put it aside for a while before returning to it and working on it for another month or so. My agent gave me some notes and then it was sent out on submission. 

Q: What would the characters be doing right now if Fair Play were to get a sequel?

A: I could see Abigail either living abroad, maybe having changed jobs and she might be in a relationship. I think that some of her friendships would be closer than ever, and some would have fallen away completely.  

Q: Can you reveal a little bit about the next mystery for us to solve for book 2? 

A: I have a short story collection coming out in 2026 which will be published by Picador. I am also currently working on another novel which will be very different from Fair Play but will stay play with form and genre.