THE FINALISTS for the 2012 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime
Novel, which will be presented on 1 September as part of the upcoming
Christchurch Writers Festival, have now been announced. The award, now in its
third year, is made annually for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel
written by a New Zealand citizen or resident.
“It
has been a really tough decision for the judging panel,” said convenor Craig
Sisterson. “There was some top notch crime,
mystery, and thriller fiction penned by New Zealanders last year. All of the
books on this year’s longlist received high praise from judges. It is great to
see one of the world’s most popular forms of writing starting to flourish here on
our own shores, though it does make our job harder.”
After
much deliberation, the expert judging panel, which included authors, reviewers, publishers, editors, and festival
organisers from New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Germany, has settled on the following finalists:
·
COLLECTING COOPER by Paul Cleave (Simon & Schuster);
·
LUTHER: THE CALLING by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster);
·
BY ANY MEANS by Ben Sanders (HarperCollins); and
·
BOUND by Vanda Symon (Penguin).
The
judges praised COLLECTING COOPER as “dark and poetic” with “great characters
and a great sense of place”; said LUTHER: THE CALLING was a “superbly crafted,
brilliant novel” written in “vivid prose that brings the characters and world
to startling life”; called BY ANY MEANS a “real page turner” and Sanders “a
master of the short sentence and crisp dialogue”, reminiscent of Elmore
Leonard; and rated BOUND as “full of surprises” and “the best yet” in Symon’s
excellent Sam Shephard series, filled with “great pacing, characters, and
dialogue”.
This year’s winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime
Novel will be announced at a ceremony at the conclusion of “The Great New Zealand
Crime Debate” event at the Geo Dome in North Hagley Park on the evening on
Saturday 1 September 2012. The winner
will receive a distinctive handcrafted trophy designed and created by New
Zealand sculptor and Unitec art lecturer Gina Ferguson, a set of Ngaio Marsh
novels courtesy of HarperCollins, and a cheque for $1,000 provided by the
Christchurch Writers Festival Trust.
The
Award’s namesake, Dame Ngaio Marsh, is renowned
worldwide as one of the four iconic “Queens of Crime” of the Golden Age of Detective
Fiction. The award was established in 2010 with the blessing of Dame Ngaio’s
closest living relatives.
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For more information, please contact:
Craig Sisterson, Judging Convenor: ngaiomarshaward@gmail.com
Congratulations. The nominations are well-deserved.
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