As we await the release of this year's longlist for the Ngaio Marsh Awards, panels of mystery and thriller writers are popping up all over Aotearoa.
On Thursday 10 April at 5:30pm, Akaroa Library Te Kete Wānanga o Te Ao Marama are excited to host their first-ever panel in this series Perpetrators on the Peninsula. The event will feature local authors Marie Connolly, author of Darksky; Heather McQuillan, author of Truth Needs No Colour; and Tanya Moir, author of The Legend of Winstone Blackhat.
Book your spot at this free session - bring a friend!
The writers on the panel are all linked through themes of people and place - giving a voice to youth, truth versus silence, how social systems can fail or turn against us and an affinity with the great wide open; Central Otago and Canterbury in particular.
Darksky is Marie Connolly's first crime novel. Connolly is an experienced academic writer and an international expert in child welfare and protection, having been Head of Social Work at Melbourne University. She has also written a number of books for young children.
Darksky is a rather fun police procedural set in Tekapo, in which a group of academics are interrogated about their possible involvement in the murder of the newly-appointed Director of Mount John Observatory, part of the Dark Sky Project.
It's the well-thought-out first of a series featuring character Nellie Prayle, a Clinical Psychologist at the University of Canterbury, who's brought in to help solve the case. In the vein of Dame Ngaio Marsh herself, Connolly contrives a cast of captive academics 'in the frame' for the murder, all with skeletons in their cupboards - an affair, academic fraud and creative accounting to name a few!
Heather McQuillan is the Director and Tutor for Write On - the School for Young Writers and a mentor for the Hagley Writers Institute. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Massey University. Heather is a three-time recipient of the Storylines Notable Books Award in 2020, 2012 and 2006, winner of the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award in 2005, the Flash Frontier Winter Writing Award in 2022. Heather was one of the winners for the inaugural RNZ Short Story competition in 2021, co-winner of the 2018 Meniscus Copyright Agency Ltd Best Prose prize winner of NZ National Flash Fiction Day in 2016 and winner of the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award in 2005.
Heather writes short fiction, poetry, Flash Fiction, and stories for both children and young adults.
Truth Needs No Colour is her latest novel. Written for young people, the story also has appeal for adults. It's a powerful story in the vein of Maddigan's Quest and Divergent; set in a dystopian post-cyclone Aotearoa where civilisation has struggled to survive, giving rise to authoritarian and corporate exploitation where cancel culture is practiced in the name of profit.
The Legend of Winstone Blackhat
Tanya Moir's The Legend of Winstone Blackhat, her third book, was shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel in 2016. It's a spellbinding tale of survival in the Wild West; told through the experiences of two cowboys hurtling across the landscape towards an unknown destination, and a twelve-year-old boy living rough on the Rough Ridge Range in Central Otago. Moir was named a Buddle Findlay Frank Sargeson Fellow in 2013 and won the Margaret Mahy Award from the Hagley Writers' Institute in 2008.
Tanya's background is in television as well as writing; she's worked in television in New Zealand, Italy, and the United Kingdom. In 2013 Tanya won a place as the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow. Moir is also a mentor at the Hagley Writers Institute.
Potter out to the Peninsula next Thursday evening to enjoy hearing these terrific tale-tellers share the methods and motivations that imbue their writing with life, movement and shadow.
This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, with a record thirty (and climbing!) author panels across the motu. Look out for Culprits in Canterbury at Rangiora Library, Friday 23 May, and an evening with Jennifer Palgrave, co-authors of Where The River Goes, at Tūranga Library, Thursday 15 May at 6pm.
Find more
- Looking for something to read? Try our mystery fiction genre guide
- Or ask our team for a reading recommendation
Add a comment to: Perpetrators on the Peninsula – Authors in Akaroa: Thursday 10 April