It's that time of year again - when we celebrate the best of Crime, Mystery and Thriller writing in Aotearoa. The Ngaio Marsh Awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday, 28 August at Tūranga, in conjunction with a session on Bookshop Detectives, featuring the authors of a new Kiwi crime series, Wardinis Bookshop owners Gareth and Louise Ward.
Dead Girl Gone is the first book of the Bookshop Detectives series, received to wide acclaim: going straight to bestsellers lists in Aotearoa. Set in the authors' home town of Havelock, its a fun story with colourful characters, witty wisecracks, some truly hilarious bookish puns and a support dog.
Bearing a strong resemblance to the authors, Garth and Eloise are also ex-police officers, caught up in a cold case while attempting the most top-secret and enormous book launch of their lives.
The authors' taste in books has earned them a place in my heart (and possibly Catherine Chidgey's). I've not read a mystery as funny as this since RWR McDonald's The Nancys.
'You didn't enjoy Great Expectations?' I ask, arranging the coffees so that they sit symmetrically on the table.
'It wasn't as good as I thought it would be.' She winks and grins before hurrying away.
As always there is a throng of thrilling reads on the Ngaio Marsh shortlists, penned by Kiwi authors who are achieving huge success here in God's-own and overseas. There are some really hot contenders here, and it's exciting to see them go head-to-head for the big prize.
Finalists for Best Novel:
With an opening scene where all the players (there's a cast list) mill around the outside of the Rotorua Courthouse in varying degrees of anticipation, Dice is a compelling story with a great angle. Told from the point of view of the jurors, it's a character-based story which examines the motivations around the actions of the accused, the reactions and perceptions of each juror.
It's the most confronting story in the lineup: a case of boys (the 'Dice Bros') playing a game which dares their group to attempt sexual connection with girls - some of them underage, some non-consenting or unconscious: given alcohol and drugs, then filmed for social media.
It's triggering, too: particularly the double standards, victim-shaming and disbelief in their stories expressed by legal representation and some male members of the jury. And then there's the game itself.
This is the intent of author Claire Baylis, a graduate of the School of Modern Letters and informed by studies of jury research, the New Zealand Crime & Victims Survey, legal academics and testimonies of sexual abuse survivors. Giving readers a fly-on-the-wall view of the courtroom and the closed cloisters of the jury room, Bayliss wants the reader to engage on a personal level: to feel what her characters are feeling and examine flaws in the justice system as it applies to rape.
There are instances of abuse and violation in and outside the classroom too - most of the women in this story experience some degree of it, shrugged off as part of life.
'While these boys were bloody stupid, we have to be careful - this could ruin their whole lives.' 'What about the girls? ..What about their lives?'
Dice is also in the running for Best First Novel.
The Caretaker is Gabriel Bergmoser's third book for adults is set in Australia with a storyline that pings between 'then' and 'now':
A man stalks a beautiful woman in an Australian backwater town. Wanted by the mob and the police, her profile on the news, Charlotte Laurent is in disguise, on the run, and scared, her drug-dealing husband murdered. Who's responsible? Charlotte? She's good at deception and wary of surveillance, covering her tracks, laying booby traps and using truth as the basis for subterfuge. Yet, starting at shadows, she gives herself away with her furtive, frightened posture. 'Paranoia is very memorable.'
In an attempt to lie low. Charlotte poses as a writer, taking a job as a caretaker in a cold, dusty off-season ski resort in Victoria's Mt Scillion.
Bergmoser uses sensual imagery in the ghostly, isolated setting with its bleached, faded 'bone forest' with its ghostly gum trees - a deserted lodge surrounded by bush so dense it's not a destination for hikers or bikers.
Wary of the only other inhabitant of the resort, John, another writer seeking solitude, gradually all options for escape are closed down as her pursuers close in. Who is John? Could he be an ally, or an enemy?
Gabriel Bergmoser is the author of the Hunted horror series which is being adapted to film in Los Angeles, no less. Bergmoser is a playwright and screenwriter who also writes fantasy and romance for children and young adults.
D.V. Bishop is smashing it overseas with his series featuring Cesare Aldo: a gay detective combating mystery and murder in Renaissance-era Florence.
I love the style of David Bishop's books, with maps and stylised chapter titles that immerse the reader in his sixteenth-century historical setting: Aldo uses a stiletto blade, the perp uses a cudgel and the victims are killed on a gibbet. Bishop has quite the niche.
The year is 1538. Three points of view, Cesare Aldo, his sidekick Strocchi and the murderer tell of a ritual horrifyingly reminiscent of the execution of fanatic monk Girolamo Savonarola forty years earlier. A merchant is hanged and burned in Florence's main square, on the anniversary of Savanarola's death. Savanarola was the instigator of the 'bonfire of the vanities' - urging his followers to take impious objects from citizens to burn in a huge bonfire.
As it becomes clear that someone is stalking the wealthy and powerful enemies of the executed monk, Aldo and Constable Strocchi, who is suffering the sleepless nights of new fatherhood, join forces to stop the madness in the middle of a summer heatwave.
The perp appears to be well funded with bribes of coin and secrets for his victims, while Bishop describes the merchants being targeted as 'ruthless' - their power that of few over many in Florence. Is this a veiled comment on the state of the nation?
Book two of the series, The Darkest Sin, won the Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Award in the UK last year - proof that Bishop can hold his own against juggernaut author Catherine Chidgey. Book four of the Cesare Aldo mysteries, A Divine Fury, is just out on the market. Watch this space.
The arrival of Pet marked a Chidgey renaissance, according to author and reviewer Rachael King.
Sparked by a chance meeting in a rest home, Pet's storyline transports readers back to the 1980s - when narrator Justine was twelve, and all her classmates wanted to be the teacher's pet. Justine, vulnerable then and grieving the loss of her mother, gravitated to her glamorous blonde teacher Mrs Price.
Mrs Price appears to fill the gap and is the role model all the body-conscious girls aspire to. Not only are the children drawn to her: all are helplessly in Mrs Price's thrall - including Justine's lonely dad.
When it's Justine's turn to be pet, Mrs Price distances her from her best friend Amy, which leaves her open to bullying and racism. Mrs Price turns a blind eye to this, using it as a way to turn the students against each other. As part of her agenda, Mrs Price begins to inveigle her way into Justine's father's heart.
Chidgey's penchant for the macabre comes to the fore in Pet, which includes a revolting incident with an axolotl. Her narrator is unreliable, there are flags waving madly around Mrs Price, while adult Justine hints at the 'thing that happened with Mrs Price,' leaving readers to puzzle over culpability.
There's a genius move that makes this book a standout, involving an invisible UV marker pen. This book is a thrilling must-read.
Chock full of intrigue, deception and voyeurism, Devil's Breath, also a debut: nominated for Best First Novel. And what a first book it is! The star of the story is Professor Eustacia Rose - a steampunk-type expert on poisonous plants.
Rose is introverted in the extreme: a charmingly weird protagonist who's out of place in contemporary London, wearing her deceased father's old suit. Johnson's sense of the character is reinforced with outdated, formal dialogue.
Splitting her time between making shady seed pickups in the dead of night, propagating her deadly rooftop garden and spying on her neighbours with a telescope, Johnson's character evolves from 'concerned citizen', to stalking, to super-sleuth, before becoming implicated herself in the death of an ex-colleague.
Rose develops a bit of a thing for her attractive female neighbour, when Simone appears in her scope. Observing a string of male visitors at Simone's home, one of whom is violent, she becomes concerned for her welfare.
Events escalate from there - Rose's garden of deathly delights gets trashed, which would be risky for anyone. Why? And who? And what the heck are Hooker's Lips? When Simone goes missing, Rose springs into action getting thoroughly involved in the hunt to find her, finding instead that she has been implicated in a murder.
It's an enthralling debut story, and my pick to win Best First Novel.
In his first thriller Anthony McCarten has a possible winner in Going Zero, an adventure-thriller that's a cross between the reality TV show Hunted and the movie, Minority Report. (Though it has an edge on these with the character of a librarian.)
It's an exciting ride. Ten contestants, or 'Zeros' compete against the best surveillance technology ever in a collaboration between a social media billionaire and the FBI, CIA, NSA and DHS - their mission? To avoid detection and capture for thirty days and win a cool three million dollars. It's a worrying amount of surveillance that includes super drones and gait recognition software and predictive algorithms.
Kaitlyn Day is one of the 'Zeros' competing. A librarian, she's a reclusive woman with tenuous family ties. She doesn't use the internet at home and is so security conscious she uses an initial on her mailbox to avoid single woman targeting. Kaitlyn thinks she has the tech sussed, setting out at 'Go Zero' to disguise her appearance, her gait, and using burner phones. She's up against an opponent of monumental proportions that has combined social media with tech and drone surveillance in a world trial - a precursor to surveilling the public for real.
Cy Baxter is behind the tech, and the comp. He's depicted as a kind of anti-Elon Musk - a likable misfit, dedicated to using his brilliance and wealth to save the world, rather than just 'rocket(ing) into space.' Character Justin Amari, part of Baxter's team, cynically views this as the 'benefits of keeping whatever the hell you actually do way, way, way under the radar'. Lol.
Will tech win the day? Maybe, but my money's on the librarian.
A Ngaio Marsh final doesn't feel right without a finalist from Dunedin. Its 'Queen of Crime' Vanda Symon delivers a visceral fifth instalment of the adventures of unorthodox Southland-born Detective Sam Shephard, who in this episode is expecting a baby while on the hunt for a perp who has murdered an expectant mother. Its horrifying and heartfelt stuff. Vanda says the book itself had 'the gestation period of an elephant.'
Sam discovers both the good and bad sides of pregnancy - that her belly can 'defuse a pissed off parent' and that she can easily get stuck in the weirdest of places due to her girth.
Pregnancy also enables Sam to produce the unique mix of anger and determination needed to solve the most abhorrent case of her life - a woman murdered by 'street caesarean', the stolen baby presumably - hopefully alive. It's enough to ruin her 'usual faith in humanity'.
Symon's text is funny, dramatic and at times, downright horrifying, with some nice imagery in her scene-setting: putting 'Dunners' on the world stage. She makes excellent use of slang, kiwi-isms such as 'hangry', 'Timas' (Timaru), 'bubs', to name a few, and sums the case up in a nutshell as 'shit timing'.
There are references to both recent and distant events in New Zealand history such as the only woman to hang in Aotearoa, Minnie Deans, and the Christchurch mosque tragedy. Shepherd also takes the reader down a Dark Web rabbit-hole when investigating possible motives for the murder and outcomes for the newborn baby.
We've seen Vanda on TV in the reality show, Traitors, in the last year. I'd like to see the Sam Shepherd stories adapted for television. Look out for the next book in the series, Prey, which comes out on 29 August, the day after the awards ceremony. Could be canny timing if a freshly-won award is in the offing.
More information
The Ngaio Marsh Awards also include the Best First Novel award, and the Best Kids/YA award. See the shortlist announcement.
More WORD Christchurch
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- Our WORD Christchurch 2024 page - Find books by writers coming to this year's festival
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