Poisons, pandemic, and a pregnant detective: 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award longlist revealed

Poisons, pandemic, and a pregnant detective: 

2024 Ngaio Marsh Award longlist revealed

A neurodivergent expert on toxic botanicals, a harrowing exploration of jury deliberations, a high-tech thriller from an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, a desperate mother searching for her son as lockdown kicks in, a gay sleuth in Renaissance Florence, and the return of a beloved fictional detective are among the diverse books named today on the longlist for the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel

“Fifteen years ago we launched the Ngaio Marsh Awards, in association with our friends at what’s now WORD Christchurch, to celebrate Kiwi excellence in one of the world’s most popular storytelling forms,” says Ngaio Marsh Awards founder Craig Sisterson.

“Over the years we’ve celebrated some world-class storytelling, and seen our local take on crime writing, aka #yeahnoir, really flourish. There were many books our judges really loved this year, beyond those that have made the longlist, and the strength and variety of this year’s longlist is going to make it another tough decision for our international panel.”

The Ngaios are named for Dame Ngaio Marsh, a contemporary of Agatha Christie and one of the Queens of Crime of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, who penned bestselling mysteries that entertained millions of global readers from her home in the Cashmere Hills. 

The 2024 longlist includes a mix of past winners and finalists, some first-time entrants and new voices, and several authors who’ve won a variety of other major awards including CWA Daggers, the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, NZ Booklovers Award for Adult Fiction, Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award, and the Booker Prize.

The longlist for this year’s Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel prize is:

•     DICE by Claire Baylis (Allen & Unwin)

•     THE CARETAKER by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins)

•     RITUAL OF FIRE by DV Bishop (Macmillan)

•     BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

•     PET by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

•     EL FLAMINGO by Nick Davies (YBK Publishers)

•     DOUBLE JEOPARDY by Stef Harris (Quentin Wilson Publishing)

•     THE QUARRY by Kim Hunt (Spiral Collectives)

•     DEVIL’S BREATH by Jill Johnson (Black & White/Bonnier)

•     GOING ZERO by Anthony McCarten (Macmillan)

•     HOME BEFORE NIGHT by JP Pomare (Hachette)

•     EXPECTANT by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

The longlist is currently being considered by an international panel of crime and thriller writing experts from the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Finalists for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Kids/YA will be announced in early August, with the finalists celebrated and winners announced as part of a special event held in association with WORD Christchurch in late August.

For more information on this year’s Best Novel longlist, or the Ngaio Marsh Awards in general, please contact ngaiomarshaward@gmail.com.

Guest Review: EMERGENCY WEATHER

EMERGENCY WEATHER by Tim Jones (The Cuba Press, 2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

Zeke has to stay with his aunt and uncle in Lower Hutt after a landslide takes his East Coast home off its foundations. Allie puts her drought-ridden Otago dairy farm out of her mind and catches a plane to the capital city. Stephanie wonders why she’s sitting around a table at the Ministry for Resilience – again.

In 'Emergency Weather', three people find themselves in Wellington as the climate crisis crashes into their lives. A giant storm is on its way – what will be left of the city when it’s over?, 

An Aotearoa we are all familiar with – extreme weather events, houses washed away, roads impassable, calls for resilience and re-building. But in Emergency Weather these events have become more extreme: “Glacial slowness had become an oxymoron.” The landscape is scarred: in Wellington there are wind turbines with their blades ripped off, many roofs replaced by plastic sheeting.

We trace the stories of three people through what has become a treacherous unpredictable land. Allie is an Otago dairy farmer whose husband has not been able to overcome the despair of endless droughts. Zeke is a teenager whose house has been swept away by flooding on the East Coast. Stephanie is a climate scientist in Wellington, a policy advisor, whose advice is welcomed, yet ignored.

When Allie accepts an invitation from Matt, her brother-in-law, the Minister for Resilience, to take a break in Wellington with him and his husband, she accepts. Zeke is sent to Wellington while his Mum waits for government relief and a plan to re-home her family. Stephanie’s wife, Miranda, builds windfarms, and they are part of a group re-wilding areas around Wellington. Stephanie likes the camaraderie of the group but knows their efforts will be futile, their plantings eventually washed away in the rising sea.

The plotting of Emergency Weather is brilliant. Allie’s harrowing attempt to reach Dunedin Airport, and Stephanie and Miranda’s nightmare tramping trip prepare the reader for what lies ahead. The three main characters weave around each other in passing before eventually ending up in the same place – a memorial service held after a climate catastrophe. The death toll is 43: “a good number for action: large enough to be shocking, small enough that the people killed could be distinguished in the public mind, could be seen as individuals rather than statistics.”

That is what Emergency Weather is about: how can people be motivated to act? All the main characters have ample motive for action, but all, even Stephanie, find themselves not wanting their lives to change, or planning a future centred on new hope and possibilities. Stephanie knows the science, but that doesn’t trump her relationship with Miranda. Allie meets someone who gives her options, something she hasn’t experienced in a long time. And Zeke is drawn into the climate action movement through attraction to privileged but driven Caity: “What would it be like to choose what you wanted to worry about?”

Emergency Weather is refreshingly complex when considering the differing views regarding global warming, while being very clear about the problem. In the Beehive, a “place where Euclidean geometry went to die”, Matt must manoeuvre between powerful lobby groups and activists. The terrifying denouement occurs while Stephanie is at another talkfest taking place on the Wellington waterfront. Zeke and his new mates are there to make their opinions known. And Allie is at the airport heading back to the farm.

Jones’ descriptions of the effects of two colliding weather fronts are gripping. Having seen footage of, or experienced, Cyclone Gabrielle, or the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake, the havoc is readily imagined. And in the midst of it, the actions of characters we have come to know are heart-breaking and heroic: “Zeke felt as though all those hours in front of the [games] console had prepared him for this moment.”

Emergency Weather offers no easy answers: “If words could chemically react with carbon dioxide to draw it safely down from the atmosphere, then Matt would be making an outstanding contribution to climate action.” But it does tell a story of how when people are confronted with a common threat, they can work together to overcome it. Emergency Weather leads the reader to ponder how action can be taken before the threat descends. An excellent #CliFi #EcoThriller.

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here. 

Subtle heroes, Stuart Kings, and giant LEGO models: an interview with Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 235th instalment of author interview series, 9mm, which has been resurrected this year after going into hibernation and only occasionally emerging in 2021-2023, for a variety of personal reasons (230 or so author interviews were conducted in 2010-2021).

Looking ahead, I plan to regularly post on Crime Watch once more, at least in terms of reviews and author interviews and awards news etc. 

Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over the years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you. You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. What a line-up. With lots more fun to come. Thanks everyone. 

If you've got a favourite crime or thriller writer who hasn't yet been part of the 9mm series, please let me know, and now I'm back on deck more fully, I'll look to make that happen for you.

Following the recent Capital Crime festival, we've got several interviews with cool writers 'already in the can' that will be published soon, so lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.

Award-winning historical mystery author

Laura Shepherd-Robinson in Bath, a setting

in her latest novel THE SQUARE OF SEVENS

Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm an author who I first met at the Bloody Scotland festival several years ago, Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Now the award-winning, bestselling author of three historical mystery novels, Laura's books have featured on BBC television show Between the Covers, and won or been shortlisted for numerous prizes including HWA Crowns, CWA Daggers, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award.

Her latest novel The Square of Sevens centres on Red, the daughter of a travelling fortune-teller, who is raised as a lady in Georgian society before trying to investigate the fate of her mother, and the enemies of her father. Along with being featured on Between the Covers, that book was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Novel of the Year choice in the Times and Guardian.

I caught up with Laura again recently at the Capital Crime festival, in the shadow of the famous St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where she took some time to become the latest crime writer to stare down the barrel of 9mm. 

9MM: AN INTERVIEW WITH LAURA SHEPHERD-ROBINSON

Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?

It depends on how purist you’re being, but I want to say George Smiley. He is both brilliant and tragic, and a beautifully understated character and yes such a big, well-rounded character at the same time. The subtleties of his character, and how he sees nuance everywhere but at the same time he has an absolute moral core to him.

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. I loved it. It introduced me to history, but with a really compelling plot and compelling characters that you lived and died for. It’s actually a complex alternative history where Britain is ruled by the Stuart Kings and the Hanover Kings are the pretenders to the throne. I don’t think you’d get that kind of book for kids nowadays. It’s an incredibly sophisticated children’s book and I still so appreciate it today.

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?

My debut was my first novel, Blood & Sugar. I’d written a few chapters here and there previously, but never tried to write a full novel before. But prior to that I’d worked in politics, in speechwriting, so I’d written a lot, including a political paper. But not fiction. That was my first go at fiction.

Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?

Once a day me and my husband go on a walk together, a short walk, about three miles, to our local Brew Dog and have a drink – not always alcoholic – and we just chat about the world and stuff. And it’s really nice. We also build giant LEGO models. My storylines in my books can be quite complicated, so it takes me out of my head and my book for a bit, as I have to focus on these giant LEGO structures. 

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?

My favourite London museum is quite a small museum, the Sir John Soane's Museum. It’s really lovely for me as a lover of the eighteenth century. He was an architect and it’s his old house. It’s a museum of his life and the 18th century and it is just so evocative. You can also do candlelit tours of it at night. 

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?

Well, it can’t be anyone too tall! If she was playing a younger me, then maybe the girl from Game of Thrones who played Arya Stark, Maisie Williams. She’s short but fun and hard as nails.

Of your writings, which is your favourite or a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?

I think the one I enjoyed writing the most was the last one, The Square of Sevens, because it challenged me to write it. And it was hard to write, but at the end of it I was really pleased that I felt I’d met the challenge. So I felt a good sense of achievement. Also, it was the book I wrote in lockdown, so other than my husband it was my companion in those days, and I went to places in that book that couldn’t go to in real life. So in that sense I look at that book as a friend, if that’s not too cheesy an answer. 

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?

When I signed, I went that very same day (the day the auction for my debut finished) to a crime festival. I didn’t know hardly anyone then, and when people heard I’d sold my book people were so welcoming and so supportive and kind. And these were crime authors I’d admired for a long time, and it was just a great feeling and confirmed what people say about the crime fiction community. 

What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?

I had a very bizarre one where someone came up to me and had been in New Zealand with my Mum in the 1970s and had a photo with my Mum from when she was 17 or something. 

Thanks, Laura, we appreciate you having a chat with us. 

Have you read Laura Shepherd-Robinson's historical mysteries? What do you love most about blending mystery with history? Do you have any favourite historical eras?

Guest review: CHASING THE DRAGON

CHASING THE DRAGON by Mark Wightman (Hobeck Books, 2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

Singapore, 1940. A local fisherman finds the body of a missing American archaeologist. Detective Inspector Betancourt of the Singapore Marine Police is first on the scene. Something doesn't quite add up. He finds out that the archaeologist, Richard Fulbright, was close to deciphering the previously-untranslatable script on a pre-colonial relic known as the Singapore Stone. This was no accidental drowning. Is there more to this case than archaeological rivalries?

Betancourt also discovers that Fulbright had been having an affair. He is sure he is onto something bigger than just academic infighting. A government opium factory draws criminal interest in his investigations into the death, Betancourt finds his own life in danger, and now he has also put himself on the wrong side of British Military Intelligence, and he is unsure which set of opponents he fears the most...!

Inspector Maximo Betancourt is back solving crimes in sweaty bustling 1940 Singapore. Like his first outing, Waking the Tiger, Chasing the Dragon is full of colourful characters, lots of action, and an intriguing crime to solve.

In Waking the Tiger, Betancourt was struggling to investigate a murder due to the victim being an Asian woman, therefore of little interest to the colonial authorities and businesses. In Chasing the Dragon, his investigation is hampered by the victim being an American man, so of such high interest that many agencies want his demise ruled an unfortunate accident and the case closed ASAP.

Betancourt is supported in his quest by his circle of acquaintances, including his colleague-of-interest, Dr Evelyn Trevose, recently appointed the new Police Surgeon. Betancourt had previously pulled away from his feelings for Evelyn, mainly due to guilt – his wife Anna being missing, not dead – but he finds himself aggrieved that Evelyn has now got a suitor, Alistair Grey, ‘the Grey Man’.

As Betancourt persists with the investigation, he must face conflicts between different arms of the police, between different echelons within the same arm of the police, between the police and the army, police and the politicians, and the police and business interests. And then there is the colonial racism: “one dead American will make twice as much noise as twelve dead Chinese.” Betancourt is a Serani, Eurasian, which puts him on the outside of most circles, but at an advantage in some.

Chasing the Dragon is an engrossing murder mystery, Bentancourt finding clues – even a treasure map! The character of the victim is slowly revealed. We read of his infatuations, his addictions, and his expertise in archaeolinguistics – all of which could be motives for his murder. Bentancourt is, sort of, reading Call of the Wild, but those close to him seem to be reading detective novels – which provides texture to the dialog: ‘on it, boss’, ‘to have you bumped off.’

Betancourt is such a good character – he’s rumpled, a bit bumbling, and occasionally unsure of himself, but at the same time he is determined, dogged, and caring. He gets blown up, bashed up, reprimanded, and insulted: “Who’s that she’s with? Is that her driver?”, “[the man] regarded Betancourt as though he was something he’d just stepped in and was having trouble removing from his shoe.”

However, he has staunch defenders and allies. “Betancourt sniffed. The odour of durian hung over Quek”: His relationship with his Sergeant Quek is delightful, and their dialogues a treat. And some on his side are the women who shape his world: his daughter, his missing wife’s best friend, and of course Dr Evelyn Trevose. 

The plotting is solid and the mystery intriguing, with some genuine surprises along the way. Due to Betancourt’s contacts at the racing track, the port, the banks, the morgue, the opium dens, and his entrée into higher society through his warrant card and his past association with his wife’s family, the novel takes the reader through the gamut of 1940s Singaporean society.

Chasing the Dragon describes a ghastly entangled web of greed and privilege, including “The British, not considering themselves forbidden from doing anything they chose”. Betancourt remains an observer: “sometimes I’m unsure what the sides are, let alone who is on which one.” The enduring evils of the British trade in opium sit alongside the fascinating theories of the long history of the settlement of the island.

As with the previous novel, the women are not just adjuncts to the male agents, they are very aware of the limits on their freedoms imposed by their society – and how to take advantage of those limits: “I did my silly-female-forget-my- own-head-one-of-these-days act.” It is possibly Betancourt’s outsider quality  that leads to his being regarded differently by the women, who have preconceptions of European males.  

The writing in Chasing the Dragon is atmospheric: “Thunder rumbled, and through the window he saw clouds like black balls of cotton amassing in the night sky. The beginnings of a headache pulsed across his forehead, and he rubbed his temples as he considered his next move.” The mystery is intriguing and the historical aspects interesting – and it ends with the next instalment in view – I look forward to the further exploits of Inspector Maximo Betancourt!

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here. 

Guest review: THE QUARRY

THE QUARRY by Kim Hunt (2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

Seeing something you shouldn't have makes life on the margins a whole lot scarier. Ranger Cal Nyx works alone in the vast NSW bushland reserves but is pulled away from the quiet and solitude by a coded message that only one other person could understand.

Dif, the only remaining link to her family, is in danger. He’s also the last person the police are going to take seriously. No stranger to the complications of Dif’s life, and with her femme MIA interstate, Cal burns rubber up and down a lonely coastline, calling in favours from her unique contacts to intercept a relentless killer.

Are Cal's skills, badass bravado and risky schemes enough to bring a single-minded murderer out of the shadows? Can she save the one and only person who truly gets her?!

Dif is a rough sleeper, for good reasons he is lying low, keeping clear of the law. However, when he witnesses a woman’s body being dumped in a quarry, he knows he must do something to get justice for the victim – but that he also must keep himself safe. He gathers scraps of evidence from the body before the next day’s quarry work obliterates it, and he tries for long-distance communication with his foster sister, NSW Park Ranger Cal Nyx, leaving her clues to follow.

Cal is taking a break from her job, trying, but failing, to face the death of her Aunt Zin. Zin took Cal in when she was at school and her life fell apart in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and soon after Dif joined the family. When Cal gets the first text message from Dif, she plunges into helping him, in part to distract herself from Zin’s death, in part through feeling bad for Dif, who “was a kind of magnet for shite at times”.

Cal takes off on a crazy trip up and down the NSW coast, north and south of Sydney – up and down so many times, she started to “feel like a frickin yo-yo”. At the same time, Dif is doing what he can to find out what sequence of events led to the incident at the quarry, and Cal is “sending messages into the ether and hoping Dif was at the other end”. Cal calls on her network to help with her investigating – she knows the best people for the job would be the cops, but also knows that could end up with the worst outcome for Dif.

Cal includes her friend/partner Detective Inspector Liz Scobie in her efforts, along with hackers, car mechanics, performers – all gifted women she knows. Things are tricky for Scobie for two reasons, there is Dif’s reticence to have anything to do with the police, and the fact that an ex-lover of hers is in command of the probably bent cop who is causing most of Dif’s grief. The reader picks up the different threads of the case from the various investigations.

Cal keeps racing around, sleeping in her car, wondering about life, getting pissed-off, and generally being a great character. She mucks up relationships, feels guilty about not being with Zin when she died, wonders what to do about a squatter who seems to have moved into her aunt’s house, worries about her injured dog, Banjo – and one time, after a cramped night sleeping in the car, she stretched her muscles on playground equipment: “To her surprise she found it exhilarating and fun.”

The Quarry is a great depiction of how people on the margins live dangerous lives, how hard it is to participate in society once society decides you don’t fit. Dif, is a transgender male, he has more than the usual fear of the cops, and of going to jail. Whenever he has tried to do good, his actions have been misunderstood, he is frail and frightened. He is terrified in the bush to see torchlight: “He’s come for me” – only to realise he is looking at the moon.

It is when Cal and Dif finally get to spend time together that the reader sees the young petrol heads who used to love hanging out together. The writing of The Quarry is atmospheric and moving, as well as pacey with plenty of action – Cal putting herself, or in one case flinging herself, into great danger on numerous occasions. The Quarry is the second Cal Nyx Mystery and I loved reading it. I look forward to reading more of Cal, her circle of friends, and their exploits.

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here. 

Ankh-Morpork City Watch and Iron Maiden gigs: an interview with MW Craven

Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 234th instalment of our long-running author interview series, 9mm - but only the third in the past two or three years. After more than 230 author interviews between 2010-2021, this series largely went into hiatus, for a variety of personal reasons. And Crime Watch itself became far more sporadic.

Looking ahead, I plan to regularly post on Crime Watch once more, at least in terms of reviews and author interviews and awards news etc. Despite all the great content here, I confess Crime Watch needs a revamp and reorganisation, but regardless of 'look', it will continue to shine a light on cool crime and thriller authors and books from all over the world, including back home 'Down Under'. 

Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over the years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you. You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. What a line-up. 

With lots more fun to come. Thanks everyone. 

If you've got a fave author who hasn't yet been part of the 9mm series, please let me know, and now I'm back on deck more fully, I'll look to make that happen for you.

Following the recent Capital Crime festival, we've got several interviews with cool writers 'already in the can' that will be published soon, so lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.

Probation officer turned award-winning author MW Craven

Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm an author who's taken British crime writing by storm in recent years, MW Craven, a welcome working class and 'northern' voice adding fresh perspective and exciting storylines to the local crime scene. I had the pleasure of catching up with Mike offstage at the recent Capital Crime festival, where we had a great chat about his new novel THE MERCY CHAIR for Australian magazine Good Reading, as well as sorting a 9mm author interview for Crime Watch. 

After decades in the Army and Probation Service, punk rock and heavy metal loving storyteller MW Craven scooped the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger in 2019 with his debut, The Puppet Show, which introduced the offbeat crime fighting duo of Cumbrian police detective Washington Poe and mathematical genius, socially awkward civilian analyst Tilly Bradshaw. The fourth novel in that series, Dead Ground, won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and the fifth, The Botanist, scooped last year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Craven will need quite the mantelpiece! 

His new novel, The Mercy Chair, continues the (mis)adventures of Poe and Tilly, and as Mike told me at Capital Crime, it marks a key turning point in the overall series, and perhaps his darkest book yet. 

But for now, MW Craven becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm. 

9MM: AN INTERVIEW WITH MW CRAVEN

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?

Commander Sam Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch. I’ve been obsessed with Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld for as long as I can remember, and the City Watch books are my very favourites. Most people have Guards! Guards! as their favourite, but I prefer the later Night Watch, as the cast of characters is wide and fully developed. There’s a touch of Vimes in Poe – how could there not be? – and a touch of Captain Carrot in Tilly...

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?

Watership Down by Richard Adams. I was given this book by my parents – who encouraged me to read from a very young age – as they’d mistakenly thought that a book about rabbits was suitable reading for an eight-year-old . . . Wrong. It’s barely suitable for an adult. I read it at least once a year.

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?

Nothing. Born in a Burial Gown, first published by Caffeine Nights in 2015 (under the name Mike Craven), was the first real thing I had written. And on the back of that I got my agent. I sometimes feel a fraud when I’m talking to fellow authors and they discuss rejection letters etc, as I never had any...

Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?

I collect books – first edition Ed McBains, unusual editions of Watership Down, first edition Stephen Kings, and I’m still trying to complete my first edition hardback collection of the Discworld novels. I’m getting there, but it’s a slow process. Other than that, I read, I socialise with my friends, and I go to gigs. The next two big ones are Stiff Little Fingers in Belfast and Iron Maiden in New York.

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?

They should go to Poe’s local – the Kings Head on Fisher Street (and if they’re lucky, Spun Gold will be on) – and then they should visit my local independent bookshop, Bookends. It’s a smart shop with friendly, knowledgeable staff, but the real gem is the second-hand part of the business, Book Case. I think I’m right in saying that there are 39 rooms in that part of the building.

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?

Sean Bean. He’s unashamedly northern and this shines through in whatever role he plays. He’s also gruff, no nonsense, sarcastic and craggy. 

Of your writings, which is your favourite or a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?

I have a soft spot for the second Poe book, Black Summer, as it’s kind of the forgotten novel. It didn’t receive the marketing that The Puppet Show did (which was the debut) and the series didn’t really take off until book three, The Curator. But I like the simplicity of the central concept – a woman Poe knows is dead walks into a police station and proves beyond scientific doubt that she is who she claims to be. How someone can be both dead and alive was such a fun thing to do. It also has that opening chapter...

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?

I celebrated with extra chicken when I found out about my first publishing deal (my wife and I were having a Nando’s in Gateshead). I had been hopeful, as Caffeine Nights had been making all the right noises about Born in a Burial Gown, but looking back, we celebrated getting that start-the-ball-rolling email quite stoically. A kind of ‘right, let’s do this’. Little did I know that the email would go on to change my life. I met my future agent the following year and gave him a just printed, not-yet-out, copy of the book, and, after reading it overnight, he asked me to send him the very next book I wrote as an exclusive submission.

What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?

There are two that stand out – being onstage at Newcastle Noir when a woman collapsed to the floor (she lived, thankfully) and the (won’t name him unless you feed me beer) author who had the mic just carried on talking as if nothing was happening. 

And at Bradford Literary festival in 2018, a woman in the audience repeatedly heckled me, Imran Mahmood and Rebecca Fleet. First, she wanted to know if we had all written the same book. Then, when it came to readings, she heckled again and asked why she, as a respectable woman of impeccable character, should have to listen to extracts from crime books. And finally, she asked why we all couldn’t just talk about Harry Potter instead. Imran and I still laugh about this.

Thanks, Mike, we appreciate you having a chat with us. 

Have you read MW Craven's Poe and Tilly books? Which is your favourite?

Guest Review: EL FLAMINGO

EL FLAMINGO by Nick Davies (2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

With no role in sight and nothing to lose, actor Lou Galloway leaves Los Angeles and heads to Mexico to drown his sorrows in cheap mezcal. But, after a round too many, he soon ends up at a grandiose wedding in the mansion of internationally wanted crime lord, Diego Flores, where Lou is mistaken for a rogue assassin known simply as El Flamingo. 

Before he can escape, he meets Maria-Carla, an enigmatic beauty with incredible perfume, and he inconveniently falls in love at first sight. When it becomes too late to turn back, Lou is swept into the dangerous world of Latin-American espionage, embarking on a journey that will take him from the desert fiestas of Mexico to the jungle-clad salsa bars of Colombia. To survive, Lou is forced to do the one thing he swore he would never do again-act.

However, as Lou assumes the identity of El Flamingo, he realizes that this may be what he was searching for all along. Maybe this was fate? Maybe this will be the role of his life!

Lou Galloway has given up his Hollywood dream and taken off for Mexico – where he falls into a whirlwind adventure, acting out the role of a lifetime. With a magic realism start, a Narcos middle, and a [no spoilers] ending, El Flamingo is a joyous ride.

From a deserted beachside bar in “Playa del something-or-other” to the jungles outside of Cali, Colombia, El Flamingo keeps the reader in what will be, for many, territory familiar from American movies and TV shows. And Lou’s lines in part coming from scripts makes the reader even more at home.

“Who would’ve thought acting was a superpower?” This book is a tribute to the noble profession of acting, of getting into a role and effectively selling yourself – in Lou’s case as El Flamingo, an enigmatic hitman. As you read El Flamingo you question whether everyone around Lou is also just playing a role – and whose side each is on: “Had I shaken hands with God? Or done a deal with the Devil?”

There is a nice meta level to Lou’s narration advising the reader at one point that they are reading “A mystery, a thriller, and now, a romance. At least for tonight”. But due to Lou not being sure what’s happening, the reader keeps guessing what the next twist will be – and this reader at least was continually surprised by the plot twists.

References to Don Quixote abound – was Quixote a fool or a hero? And which is Lou? 

“Somehow, I’d become an utterly unreadable man, all down to the fact that no one was more confused about the whole thing than me.” This self-deprecation is what keeps the reader engaged, and also rooting for Lou in his newfound mission to decidedly be a hero – yet concerned about his confidence to follow through – “As it always does, the coffee began to raise my over-all level of intelligence.”

There are some fabulous scenes in the novel, a novel that would make a great movie – there is the dance in a salsa bar in a rainforest, Maria-Carla singing in the El Jaguar Cantante, the demonstration of what can be done with a single playing card or a bottle of expensive bubbles, and that surreal moment early in the piece when Lou enters a lavish party out in the middle of nowhere – “a gringo idiot in a cheap Hawaiian shirt.”

The plotting of El Flamingo is superb apart from one major coincidence the plot hinges on, requiring a regular influx of failed actors into Mexico. Aside from this, all is neatly explained, and after all “Sometimes, even in Mexico, an extra sombrero is too much to ask”. I just loved reading this book!

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here. 

Guest Review: RESURRECTION

RESURRECTION by Roger Simpson (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

Jane Halifax is back in a twisted story of betrayal, where the formidable forensic psychiatrist will discover that the only person you can trust is yourself. A near-fatal car accident left Jane Halifax in a coma, and when she wakes, she has no idea who she is …

Initially comforted by unlikely specters of past cases, Jane has no memory of the accident and is unaware of everyone else’s the police, who believe she was deliberately run off the road; the lawyer, whose files were in her car at the time of the accident -- files he never should have given her; her neurosurgeon, who fears a relapse; and her partner, Tim, who is slowly realizing Jane remembers nothing of the last two years -- including their relationship.

A young woman named Luna is the only one who seems able to bring Jane back to the present. Linked to a thirty-two year old case from Jane’s past, Luna has a quest of her own she can only solve with Jane’s help. But if Jane wants to help her, she first needs to heal, and discovers there are things other than the car accident hampering her recovery …

Lou Jane might finally be making headway with a twenty-year-old case, when an accident sends her spinning into a strange world. Three months after the accident, she is surrounded by “strangers who somehow feel familiar” – are they familiar because she knows them, or just because she has recently got used to them? Are they friends, carers, guards, or gaolers? Is she really ‘Jane’?

The things that usually give us certainty, photographs and mirrors, are treacherous to Jane, and from amongst the characters around her who can she trust? Surely not “Doctor Two-Bob Each Way, Doctor Spin the Wheel and Bet on Red, Doctor Don’t Ask Me – I’m a Neurosurgeon”. And then there are the trips to the spaceship. Disorienting and scary. For Jane, spaces keep changing, getting around is not just a physical but a mental challenge.

I don’t want to say who or what Jane is – the intrigue is in finding out alongside her, and in piecing together the various mysteries she is trying to solve, both professionally and personally. The reader is given clues and guesses some of the answers, but the mystery/thriller angle wasn’t really the focus for me, it was the pleasure of reading about the complexities of the central character, at once damaged and vulnerable and staunch and smart.

I read Resurrection not knowing the Jane Halifax TV series or having read the first book in the series; Resurrection is #2. I am glad that’s how I got to know Jane – with her story for a long time hopping around like her confused mind. It is at once sad, “Lonely. Desolate would be a better description …”, and intriguing, “But how can you tell when a liar is telling the truth?”

Once the murk begins to clear, Jane starts recognising herself, but also recognising that she is no longer the person she thinks she might  have been before the accident. The various mysteries are solved: Why was she always thinking of a 20-year-old TV show? Why did she have recurring vivid memories that made no sense? What where the files she was collecting before the accident, and why was she revisiting that old case? Jane picks up more challenges as she struggles with her lingering amnesia, trusting only her instincts to judge who she should help and who she should remain wary of.

There are real threats to Jane’s safety and some tense moments in Resurrection, and the various mysteries are resolved in an interesting, messy, not black-and-white psychological way. There are lots of good solid characters, and Jane adds humour amidst her trauma: “Well, it’s easy for her to say; she hasn’t lost touch with herself.” She gives people great nicknames in retaliation for them calling her by someone else’s name. She summarises herself: “The transgressive mind is my addiction.” Resurrection is a great and unusual read.!

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here.