Fair Play by Louise Hegarty (Picador, £16.99)
Award-winning short-story writer Hegarty’s debut opens with guests arriving at an Irish Airbnb country house for a murder mystery-themed birthday party. Abigail has organised the celebration for her brother Benjamin, and old friends, including his former fiancee, are invited, as well as his colleague Barbara – but the morning after the festivities, he is found dead in his locked bedroom. So far, so run-of-the-mill, but the book then splits into competing storylines, with the action oscillating between a metatextual golden age narrative, complete with butler, gardener, maid and esteemed amateur detective, and a naturalistic and sometimes heartbreaking account of grief. With plenty of in-jokes for golden age aficionados and a remarkably assured handling of the necessary tonal shifts, this engaging, ingenious Möbius strip of a book is undoubtedly the most original crime novel you’ll read all year.
All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman (4th Estate, £16.99)
Harman’s debut novel is set around west London private school St Angeles, where parents rich enough to be unperturbed by the imposition of VAT on fees fork out hefty sums for their little darlings’ primary education. Ageing party girl and failed singer Florence Grimes is very much the odd mum out in this glossy milieu, but when her 10-year-old son’s classmate Alfie, an entitled bully who is the heir to a frozen food empire, goes missing on a school trip and young Dylan becomes a person of interest to the police, she gets on the case. Whether you warm to this hot-mess-turns-amateur-sleuth tale rather depends on whether you find Florence enraging or endearing, with her habit of asking a neighbour to listen out for Dylan while she goes out for hook-ups, and a preternatural talent not only for self-sabotage, but also for landing other people in it up to their necks. That said, it’s funny, pacy and very readable, with the social satire absolutely on point.
