The best mysteries and thrillers of 2025 -- "Elle"

One title on Elle magazine's 2025 list of the best mysteries and thrillers:

Fair Play by Louise Hegarty

Hegarty follows the conventions of all the great traditional mysteries...and then twists them. Fair Play is set in a rural Irish country home, an Airbnb rented by a group of friends to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a murder-mystery theme party. When a guest is found dead the next morning, the friends are thrown into an investigation that references all the classic detective plot devices in such a twisty way that you’ll discover there are many more questions (and, eventually, answers) than you first realized.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Fair Play is among CrimeReads' best traditional mysteries released in 2025.

The Page 69 Test: Fair Play.

Q&A with Louise Hegarty.

--Marshal Zeringue