I can see it started years ago*…
Ngaio Marsh Awards founder Craig Sisterson takes a look at some modern New Zealand crime novels released in the years before the Awards began
Phar Lap. Crowded House. Pavlova. Given our Aussie cousins’ penchant for touting Kiwi talent as their own (fingers crossed for future news of ‘Australasian’ candidate Helen Clark becoming UN Secretary-General), it’s hardly a shocker that our own Paul Thomas was co-winner of the inaugural Ned Kelly Award for Australian crime writing in 1996.
Not that we can fault their taste: Inside Dope (Moa Beckett, 1995) is a cracker of a crime novel, the picaresque tale of ex-con Duane Ricketts, who searches for the Mr Asia drug syndicate’s lost loot after being released from a Thai prison. Violent, funny, full of grit and wit, it was the second book in Thomas’s electrifying series featuring maverick Maori detective Tito Ihaka.
It would be another fourteen years before New Zealand would have our own literary prize for crime and thriller writing ... READ FULL FEATURE HERE
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