Beyond whodunnit: 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists revealed

Beyond whodunnit: 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists offer page-turning tales and social critiques across time and place

From stem cell research to sexual assault juries, the dangers of a surveillance society to mental health and animal abuse, the finalists for the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards offer readers a diverse array of page-turning mysteries and thrills entwined with societal issues, set against a variety of locales and eras from Renaissance Florence and Nazi Germany to contemporary Aotearoa.

‘While crime and thriller fiction is often talked about in terms of its page-turning plotlines, or puzzling twists and surprising reveals, nowadays it’s also a fantastic vehicle for exploring character and society,’ says Ngaio Marsh Awards founder Craig Sisterson. ‘Our 2024 Ngaios finalists beautifully showcase that, with a kaleidoscopic range of tales full of engaging and memorable characters, exploring a wide variety of social issues in many different places.’

Now in their fifteenth season, the Ngaio Marsh Awards celebrate excellence in mystery, thriller, crime, and suspense writing from Aotearoa New Zealand storytellers. The 2024 finalists were announced today in Best First Novel, Best Novel, and Best Kids/YA categories.

“I’m absolutely delighted that we’re celebrating some of our terrific kids’ mystery and thriller writers as a separate category this year,” says Sisterson. “Many of us develop our love of reading, and all the benefits that brings us throughout our lives, thanks to children’s authors. In Aotearoa we have amazing kids’ authors, across various forms and genres.”

The finalists for the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Kids/YA are:

• CAGED by Susan Brocker (Scholastic)
• KATIPO JOE: WOLF’S LAIR by Brian Falkner (Scholastic)
• MIRACLE by Jennifer Lane (Cloud Ink Press)
• NIKOLAI’S QUEST by Diane Robinson (Rose & Fern Publishing)
• NOR’EAST SWELL by Aaron Topp (One Tree House)

Falkner, an Auckland storyteller now living in Queensland, won the first-ever special award for Best Kids/YA in 2021. Wellington author Jennifer Lane has previously won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel, while Bay of Plenty writer Susan Brocker, Auckland author Diane Robinson, and Hawke’s Bay author Aaron Topp are all first-time Ngaios finalists.

“Moving forward, we hope to award a Best Kids/YA prize biennially,” says Sisterson, “alternating it with our Best Non-Fiction category that has been running since 2017.”

This year’s finalists for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel, a prize that in recent years has gone to authors including Jacqueline Bublitz and Michael Bennett, are:

• DICE by Claire Baylis (Allen & Unwin)
• EL FLAMINGO by Nick Davies (YBK Publishers)
• DEVIL’S BREATH by Jill Johnson (Black & White/Bonnier)
• A BETTER CLASS OF CRIMINAL by Cristian Kelly
• MAMI SUZUKI: PRIVATE EYE by Simon Rowe (Penguin SEA)

“It’s really heartening each year to see the range of new voices infusing fresh perspectives into the crime and thriller backstreets of our local literary landscape,” says Sisterson. 

“Our 2024 finalists are Kiwi storytellers based on four continents, each offering something new and exciting, from madcap capers in Latin America to an unusual Japanese sleuth or a neurodivergent professor of toxic botanicals, to former police detective Cristian Kelly and legal researcher Claire Baylis harnessing their real-life expertise in captivating fictional tales.”

Lastly, the finalists for this year’s Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel are:

• DICE by Claire Baylis (Allen & Unwin)
• THE CARETAKER by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins)
• RITUAL OF FIRE by DV Bishop (Macmillan)
• PET by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
• DEVIL’S BREATH by Jill Johnson (Black & White/Bonnier)
• GOING ZERO by Anthony McCarten (Macmillan)
• EXPECTANT by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

“It’s a strong group of finalists to emerge from a dazzlingly varied field,” says Sisterson. “This year’s Ngaio Marsh Awards entrants gave our international judging panels lots to chew over, and plenty of books judges enjoyed and admired didn’t become finalists. ‘Yeahnoir’, our local spin on some of the world’s most popular storytelling forms, is certainly in fine health.”  

Crime writing is a broad church nowadays, notes Sisterson, including but going beyond traditional murder mysteries and whodunnits in the style of Dames Ngaio and Agatha Christie, to deliver insights about society and humanity alongside rollicking reads.

“As the likes of Val McDermid have said, if you want to better understand a place, read its crime fiction,” says Sisterson. “Many of our finalists hold up a mirror to society, taking readers into varied lives through their stories, alongside page-turning entertainment.”

The 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists will be celebrated and this year’s winners announced at a special event held at the WORD Christchurch Festival on Wednesday, 28 August.

For more information on any or all of our 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists, or the Ngaios in general, please contact ngaiomarshaward@gmail.com, or founder Craig Sisterson, directly.