Several tales exploring historic eras are named among this year’s Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists.
Now in their tenth season, the Ngaio Marsh Awards celebrate the best of New Zealand crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. “It’s been a really remarkable year for our international judging panels across all three categories,” says awards founder Craig Sisterson. “For one, we never could have envisaged when we began in 2010 and chose to honour our legendary Kiwi queen of crime with our awards name that years later a book that Dame Ngaio herself began more than 75 years ago would become a finalist.”
Tokoroa-raised (and FANZA patron) Stella Duffy’s brilliant resumption of Dame Ngaio’s charming Inspector Alleyn in a wartime tale set on the Canterbury plains is among five outstanding finalists for the 2019 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. Four of which are set at least fifty years ago:
- THIS MORTAL BOY by Fiona Kidman (Penguin)
- MONEY IN THE MORGUE by Ngaio Marsh & Stella Duffy (HarperCollins)
- THE QUAKER by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins)
- CALL ME EVIE by JP Pomare (Hachette)
- THE VANISHING ACT by Jen Shieff (Mary Egan Publishing)
The 2019 Ngaio Marsh Award finalists will be celebrated with two special events in Christchurch on 14 September, as part of the WORD Christchurch special spring season.
