Fifteen years, fifteen stories: 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel longlist revealed

Fifteen years, fifteen stories: 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel longlist revealed

A Māori sleuth trying to leave policing behind, a New York bartender with an entourage of dead girls, a colonial Wellington tale entwined with infamous Edinburgh body-snatchers, a gay investigator in Renaissance Florence, a probation officer whose beloved husband is sucked into the pit of internet disinformation, and a couple of bookselling former British coppers are among the diverse array of characters and stories named today on the longlist for the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel.

“While we named Aotearoa’s awards after one of the legendary Queens of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, this year’s longlistees – and our entrants more broadly – clearly demonstrate the depth, diversity, and evolution of our local take on crime, mystery, and thriller writing, aka #yeahnoir,” says Ngaio Marsh Awards founder Craig Sisterson. “We’ve come a long way since the classic murder mysteries that Dame Ngaio penned from her house in the Cashmere Hills, and were devoured by readers all over the world.”

This year’s longlist includes a mix of past Ngaio Marsh Award winners and finalists, some first-time authors and other fresh voices, and several storytellers who’ve won and been shortlisted for a range of other local and international book awards, from the famed CWA Daggers in the UK to the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year in Australia, the Beltie Prize in the United States, and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

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

• RETURN TO BLOOD by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)

• THE HITCHHIKER by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins)

• A DIVINE FURY by DV Bishop (Macmillan)

• LEAVE THE GIRLS BEHIND by Jacqueline Bublitz (Allen & Unwin)

• WOMAN, MISSING by Sherryl Clark (HQ Fiction)

• HELL’S BELLS by Jill Johnson (Black & White)

• THE MIRES by Tina Makereti (Ultimo Press)

• A FLY UNDER THE RADAR by William McCartney

• HOME TRUTHS by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)

• 17 YEARS LATER by JP Pomare (Hachette)

• OKIWI BROWN by Cristina Sanders (The Cuba Press)

• A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND by Tina Shaw (Text Publishing)

• THE CALL by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)

• PREY by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

• THE BOOKSHOP DETECTIVES: DEAD GIRL GONE by Gareth & Louise Ward (Penguin)

“Ranging across settings, centuries, and sub-genres, it’s a fascinatingly varied longlist that’s already giving our international judging panel plenty to ponder and debate,” says Sisterson, who helped establish the awards in 2010. 

The finalists for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction will be announced in mid-August, with the finalists celebrated and the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award winners announced as part of a special event in conjunction with WORD Christchurch and featuring the Court Jesters on Thursday, 25 September.