I have been holding back from posting another entry, because the previous post
Spelling Grammar Words Language
was so popular - the number of comments is heading for 100, the sign of high interest.
A key feature is that the word 'fancy' does not appear in the post, but does appear in a response I made:
Uncle Matthew (ie Farve) says in The Pursuit of Love
'Fancy hearing one's wife talking about notepaper - the irritation!'
Dear blogfriend Roger Allen picked up on this use of 'fancy' and then so did everyone else, and the word has now been discussed in the comments more than I should think it ever has been, with every possible meaning given a going-over.
- including the romance of prostitution as a way out of poverty, as featured in a Bobbie Gentry song (top picture, which came from another fan, Andy Miller of Backlisted. We are a small select group).
As I said on social media #ReasonsILoveMyBlog: nothing could make me happier than finding a random shared hot topic this way. Thank you everybody. And you can still comment - on 'fancy', or on US/UK differences in particular reference to punctuation and quote marks, disinterested, Molesworth, and tricolonic anaphora. Fill your boots.
But I did think it was time I posted on another book, so here it is.
Fair play by Louise Hegarty
published 2025
A very unusual book, and one that is likely to
divide readers. For me it started off
very very well, but then… but I genuinely think others will like it and so I am giving it a cautious recommendation.
Louise Hegarty is an award-winning Irish writer, and this is her first novel. She is obviously a huge fan of detective fiction, which gets her a long way with me – though I was rather disappointed to read in an interview her saying** that 'In Agatha Christie books, people are dying everywhere and no one seems to be overly upset’. When people say things like this, I think ‘have they read any of the books at all?’ In The Hollow, in Five Little Pigs, in Sparkling Cyanide, in A Pocket Full of Rye… You could not think about these books and say no-one cared. ('Agatha' tab at the top of the homepage lists posts on all these books, and on everything else she wrote: Agatha )
** gerund, as featured in the comments on the previous post, though in this case the use of possessive is concealed, because 'her' can be either object or possessive.
Fair Play starts in modern times, 2022. Abigail arrives at an Airbnb: she is organizing a murder mystery weekend to celebrate her brother’s birthday, which happens also to be New Year’s Eve and Day. (That fact completely disappears from the book: no-one ever mentions it again, nothing is made of its being New Year at all.)
A group of friends collect, have a not-very-exciting party,
and go to bed (or to sleep it off on a sofa). The next morning Benjamin, Abigail’s
brother, doesn’t come down to breakfast: they end up breaking down the door and
they find him dead.
And now the book splits into alternating chunks. In one timeline a private detective turns up to investigate what might be a murder. He has a sidekick, he interviews everyone, and eventually he collects everyone together and says he has solved the murder. And then he isn’t so sure, and he gives another explanation and accuses another person. These sections are taking place in an alternate timeframe, never really specified, where Abigail and Benjamin are posh people who own the big house, employ servants and have family money. There are endless references to Golden Age detectives of the past, names and people. Those old-time lists of rules for such books – by eg Knox and van Dine – are reproduced.
Interspersed with this, there are sections of Abigail’s life after her brother’s death –
which the police think was suicide. She is miserable, and no-one understands
her grief.
The two lines get further and further apart: presumably to
show how cartoonish the detective is, and how real Abigail’s feelings.
I really wanted to like this book: I honestly thought I
would… but I lost patience with this. Her knowledge of GA fiction was detailed
but seemed lightweight, and I actively disliked Abigail.
Four of the main characters were called Abigail, Benjamin,
Cormac and Declan. I wasn't sure if this was another easter egg - alphabetical characters appear in a Georgette Heyer crime book too, as I point out here:
The mysterious gate-crasher in fancy dress...
I didn’t understand the relevance of the gardener, the
screwdriver, the maid, and many other items.
And the actual ending completely defeated me: I did not
understand what it was meant to show.
Oh dear. I don’t want to criticise it: she’s obviously a very talented writer, but I honestly couldn’t get what she was doing here. I would be very interested in reading other reviews from detective fiction fans: maybe they can explain what I’m missing.
I love books set in big Irish houses – it’s a topic we’ve covered many times on the blog eg here, with pictures.
Young people pics from a favourite resource,
Des res in quiet rural location | Linziestown House, Wexford… | Flickr
Hmm...Definitely doesn't sound like my sort of book, Moira, even with the references to detective fiction. Different timelines can work well, but it's not easy to do, and it doesn't look as though it was done well here. Hmm...Fancy that! I don't think I fancy this one, even if Abigail and Benjamin have a fancy house.
ReplyDeleteWell done for getting 3 x instances of Fancy in there! brava!
DeleteThis one doesn't tickle my fancy either! The (fantasy?) detective alternating with Abigail's story actually turns me off the book; I'm easily distracted and no doubt would be very confused in a very short time. (I'm trying to use semi-colons more often.) Will you continue to slip in little grammatical tips? (So we can say "I've never heard of that one" or "That's one of my pet peeves too".) I'm not consistent in my use of possessives with gerunds. Isn't "her" unique in that situation? Calling it "concealed" makes it sound a little sneaky!
ReplyDeleteI feel a bit bad as I don't like going at living authors who've put their all into a book. She is definitely an accomplished writer and I would try one more by her...
DeleteNice use of period after quotation marks there.
I'd have to be VERY sure of myslf before trying to advise others - I have just a few areas where I think I know what I am talking about! At a very young age I went to work at the BBC World Service which had very prescriptive rules, so I learned a lot - but some of that is out of date.
I think that 'her' is 'concealed' in this case because the possessive can sound a bit odd if you are not familiar with the rule, but her it is safe!
I think you may be right that it is unique, I am trying to think if there are any other possible examples...
To be fair to Louise Hegarty, many GA mysteries were all about the puzzle and didn't give a sense of the loss of a real person. I would say this applies more to the earlier years of the GA, and I would say that these kind of books are the ones that are not much read today. One much-used technique is to have the victim be a dreary domestic tyrant whose death is seen as a relief to all concerned and provides a wide field of suspects. Was Hegarty intending to write a serious whodunit, or was she parodying the genre, do you think?
ReplyDeleteNerys
But she did specify Agatha Christie in the interview.
DeleteI'm not clear what she was trying to do: that's why I had a problem with the book. I think the 'real' modern bits were meant to be very serious. So the change in tone was very marked.
I really want to be fair to her...