The Ngaio Marsh Awards and the Murderous Mystery are coming! In conjunction with WORD Festival Christchurch and The Court Jesters, the awards will be held on Thursday 25 September, in the TSB Space at Tūranga.
Often the most exciting category of any award round is Best First Novel, which can be full of surprises.
The Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Crime Novel showcases new writers emerging onto the scene, like murderous wee butterflies.
Mystery writing in Aotearoa has become a thriving genre: teeming with excellent writers, making it a tough choice for judges. This year is no exception. Here's a round-up of the nominees for this year's award (drum roll):
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Dark Sky by Marie Connolly
- Lie Down With Dogs by Syd Knight
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A Fly Under The Radar by William McCartney
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The Defiance Of Frances Dickinson by Wendy Parkins
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The Call by Gavin Strawhan
- Kiss of Death by Stephen Tester
Marie Connolly, Darksky
He walked over to the whiteboard. ...Smiling faces looked back at him. How different they were from the usual mug shots that normally stared back at him. ...Happy faces of people who lived privileged lives.
Author Marie Connolly sets Darksky, a police procedural, at Lake Tekapo. In this unique setting, Professor Evelyn Major, newly appointed at the University of Canterbury to make a clean sweep of the department, is brutally murdered at Mt John Observatory. Mt John is the home of the Dark Sky Project. (Kaikoura has also just become a dark sky reserve too.)
It's a compelling story, with more than a few possible perps "in the frame" and much to-ing and fro-ing between the murder location, Christchurch and Fairlie. The murder mystery has a good setup, reminiscent of Ngaio Marsh stories - the suspects are a captive group of academics there for a conference.
We've got more suspects than wētā in a woodshed.
With a scandalous affair, creative accounting and academic fraud in more ways than one, the stakes are raised. Who has the most to lose? Who is most likely to act on it? Will the police ever find the murder weapon?
Connolly might have made more of the setting, perhaps, describing it in more figurative language, but there are some terrific phrases in this book, while she seems to get into her stride towards the end - was she holding back?
Darksky is an enjoyable story with well-realised characters that marks the beginning of the Nellie Prayle series, about a Clinical Psychologist lecturing at University of Canterbury.
Syd Knight, Lie Down With Dogs
The wind whipped against him as he stared up at the buildings. Mirrored glass reflected white clouds moving fast across the sky. He was struck by the way they danced across the bent and fractured windows. Even the sky was f****d up.
A film-maker, Syd Knight hails from Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington and wrote his first crime novel while working on a masters using stories intended for film.
Lie Down With Dogs is about a detective recovering from a case that got him shot and his lover killed, when he is given a cold case that might just give him the opportunity for revenge. With a complex, adventurous plot that eschews a straight line, it's story-driven and voyeuristic, looking over characters' shoulders 'like a torch in the darkness.'
Ex-Dunedin cop Kyle Williams has struggled through physical rehabilitation, bad dreams and the ignominy of counselling to return to the police force in Ōtautahi Christchurch - now propelled by the statistical success of cases solved.
Tracey Michaels is a young constable with her sights set on working in the CIB. When she single-handedly brings down a perp who's been avoiding custody for some time, she gets her big break: working cold cases with Williams. It's not as bad as it sounds: Williams would rather be Kyle, than Sir, and he's making the coffees.
Dark, fast-moving and fun, Lie Down With Dogs is bursting with corrupt cops and dastardly drug lords. It would make a good film!
William McCartney, A Fly Under the Radar
If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him.
Funny from the get-go with well-realised main characters, A Fly Under the Radar is enjoyable. Its dialogue driven, full of gags, corruption, a wee bit of menace, and gore.
Detective Rodger: 'One day Stilton you'll f*** up, and then I'll be there to nail your arse to the wall.
Van: 'Promise it will be you. I wouldn't want anyone competent on the job.'
Van Stilton is a criminal lawyer. Anastasiya Turing, aka Grasshopper, 'You have big balls for a small woman,' is his intern. Or, as Van sees her, a baby lawyer. Van and Grasshopper find themselves defending one FatMan (almost his real name) from a drug charge (namely possession of cocaine).
The sheer size of the abovementioned FatMan, full name Frederick Ari Turner - definitely a man you don't want to mess with - leaves a lot of leeway for body humour. McCartney exploits this to an irreverent max:
" 'Your full name is Frederick Ari Turner?'
'Hence my sobriquet.' Van looked at him. 'Due to my initials.'
'Really, the initials? Not related to, I don't know, your massive size?'
Grasshopper, having the same thought, raised an eyebrow, but by no more than a millimetre. Fatman's own eyes flashed."
Thus begins a hilarious romp across Aotearoa: a road trip reminiscent of Goodbye Pork Pie, from Auckland to Wellington; with a lot of laughs along the way, including a very funny incident involving hippos. Author William McCartney sets readers sympathies firmly with the bad dudes, who are funnier and much better organised than the cops who try to catch them out.
Wendy Parkins, The Defiance of Frances Dickinson
The Defiance of Frances Dickinson
My daughter is broken-hearted, Reverend, and I never knew her do anything to blame. ...The fault is all on his part, yet she repeatedly entreats him to forgive her!
Based on an historical, scandalous court case from the 1840s, Wendy Parkins' debut examines the impact of sustained spousal abuse - physical, mental and emotional, on a woman who seeks a separation and divorce from her husband.
Conveyed through letters and diary entries, The Defiance of Frances Dickinson is beautifully written and reads like the Austen and Mitford novels the lead character admires - with figurative descriptions of the beauty of nature and the brooding setting in Scotland. Author Parkins adds a couple of abhorrent articles from the time on miscarriage and the behavioural expectations of women, with excerpts of poetry from Wordsworth and Robbie Burns.
After a brief and heady courtship, Frances (Fanny) Dickinson, an English heiress, marries John Geils, a Scottish gentleman. It soon becomes clear that gentleman he is not. John, a man's-man raised in a military family, is more at home outdoors, with male company.
From personal letters and eye-witness accounts rendered in diary and journal form, a harrowing tale unfolds of a violent relationship with an ill-mannered, intemperate and adulterous man who forces himself not only on his wife, but almost all of the female servants in his vicinity.
The problem for disabused Fanny is the law. Marriage in the nineteenth century meant that all a woman's worldly goods, properties and inheritances became her husband's, leaving her at his mercy. A father had the higher claim to any children from the marriage, whereas modern litigation has moved from placing greater benefit on the care of the mother to providing balanced custody from both parents.
Will Fanny be successful in her case? There are some good moments of detective work in this story but it is the way the law functioned, or didn't and the impact on the women and children under its care, that is of interest in this story,
"He treats you like a dog, Fanny," I said in a low voice that I hoped Mrs Dickinson might not hear.
Fanny smiled. "I wish he did. Have you seen how he favours Fury?" she said.
Gavin Strawhan, The Call
...the truth was she didn't know if she'd ever want to go back. She had loved her job, been bloody good at it too, and it had very nearly killed her. It had almost certainly killed Kloe Kovich.
Gavin Strawhan's first novel, The Call, won the Allen and Unwin Fiction Prize in 2023, earning him $10,000 for his unpublished manuscript.
The Call hooks readers from the beginning with hints about the incident that almost took the life of its main character. Honey (a Detective Sergeant in the Serious Crimes Unit with Auckland police) was injured after an arrangement with a gang informant on a meth shipment between the Reapers (an Australian gang) and the Knights (Kiwis deported from Australia under the 501 law) goes bad.
Strawhan's text is peppered with chuckles to lighten up the dark, at times hopeless situations facing his characters. Many of these are strong women. Honey is a pushy broad, even after the incident, hungry for answers. Kloe is seeking revenge on her abusive ex and a friend in Honey. Kloe's daughter Shyla proves to be the toughest of all while Kloe's sister Renata faces some difficult decisions which test her loyalty.
Back in her old home-town of Waitutū, Honey is recovers while keeping an eye on her mother, who's been diagnosed with dementia when she discovers there's more to the death of her sister Scarlett. Was it really suicide, or misadventure, or foul play?
Strawhan sets up his players, fleshing them out to show the flaws of the human psyche. People Honey once knew. People who are distant, not the same as she remembers them from childhood. Could they be lying to her about Scarlett? Are they leaving bits out? Could her old best friend Marshall be mixed up in her death?
What is familiar are the two faces stalking her in a black BMW. They're Reapers. Why have they come back? To finish the job?
The Call has a strong sense of place - a small seaside town surrounded by bush and native birds; beautiful by day, isolated and sinister after dark. There's dark intent too in small-town gossip that convicts people without a court of law.
Gavin is a screen writer and an executive producer for both New Zealand and overseas television shows (Mercy Peak, Being Eve, Filthy Rich, Kaitangata Twitch, Jackson’s Wharf and Matariki). He has recently been named on of ten upcoming writers to follow on the New Voices of Aotearoa list.
Stephen Tester, Kiss of Death
'Your Honour, my learned friend appears to be jealous that I'm wearing as much silk as he is. ...If Mr Haynes truly believes corseted counsel are essential to preserving the dignity of this court, I would gladly recommend a boutique salon on Lambton Quay which can offer him a fitting at a very reasonable price.'
It's been a great year for historical crime in this round of Ngaio Marsh nominees. These have been a standout for me this year and I've enjoyed the content.
Stephen Tester sets Kiss of Death in early twentieth-century Wellington, during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. The lead character, Lorna McDougal, is the only lady solicitor in the city. Lorna reminds me a lot of Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher - an emancipated woman who frees others from the shackles of conformity and sexism.
From the opening gambit this story is a lot of fun - it begins with a group of women exploiting a loophole in a council bylaw that requires women to be appropriately covered from shoulder to knee while swimming. Complete with the disgusting detritus of the day floating in Oriental Bay, the ladies' protest results in arrests for indecent exposure.
Ms McDougal continues to fight for equality on a daily basis and, due to the 'flu, finds herself promoted to Crown Prosecutor in a strange case of murder - an upper class woman accused of killing her husband with a kiss.
Kiss of Death is risqué and entertaining, with a solid foundation in the practice of law at the turn of last century.
Attend the awards
The Ngaio Marsh Awards and The Murderous Mystery will be held on Thursday 25 September, 6 - 7:30 pm. Tickets are $25 for waged, $20 for unwaged.
More mystery
- Looking for a good mystery novel? Try our mystery fiction genre guide, or ask us for a Reading Recommendation
- Find finalists for the other Ngaio Marsh Awards categories; Best Crime Novel, Best Non Fiction (biennial award)
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