Crime Wave: Ngaio Marsh Award and local crime highlighted

The Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, the "flourishing" state of New Zealand crime fiction in general, and the upcoming presentation of the inaugural award at the Whodunnit and Whowunnit? event next Tuesday evening, are all featured in a great feature (pictured above) by Arts & Books Editor Guy Somerset in this week's edition of the New Zealand Listener.

Long considered one of New Zealand's premier publications, the Listener (as it's commonly known) is a popular weekly current affairs and entertainment magazine, renowned for having one of the better books sections amongst local publications. So it's terrific to see our local crime fiction, and the upcoming award, featured in its pages in this way.

Somerset canvasses the current and historic happenings in New Zealand crime fiction in the article, and gets some great comments from the likes of local crime writers Paul Thomas, Vanda Symon, Neil Cross, and the mysterious Alix Bosco, along with New Zealand Book Council chief executive Noel Murphy, and yours truly. So there are some diverse insights, which is great.

So if you're a booklover in New Zealand, go out and grab a copy of this week's Listener and have a read. For those overseas, the article will be available online from 11 December (the magazine places its articles online a couple of weeks after the issue is no longer current).

And oh, yes, that is me with the strange look on my face in the photo, down one of Auckland's 'mean streets' one evening. It's strange enough being the interviewee rather than the interviewer, let alone getting my head around being photographed for an article...

Have your read the Listener article? What do you think? Who do you think will or should win the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel? Thoughts and comments appreciated.