Ngaio Marsh Award Winners

Paul Cleave and Ray Berard were announced as the winners of the 2016 Ngaio Marsh Awards at the WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival.

TRUST NO ONE (Upstart Press), a mind-bending psychological thriller about a writer with early onset Alzheimer’s who starts confessing the murders in his novels were real, earned Cleave his record third Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. The judges described it as “a stunningly audacious novel that functions as a literary hall of mirrors” – a book that “succeeds brilliantly on many different levels”.

Ray Berard scooped the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel with his Rotorua-set debut thriller INSIDE THE BLACK HORSE (Mary Egan Publishing). The judges praised his tale of the aftermath of an armed robbery that interrupts a drug deal as “a lucid and potent portrait of good people and gangsters that is unmistakably Kiwi in flavour and tone... a fine story with considerable depth.”

“It was wonderful to celebrate our best modern-day Kiwi crime writers at a terrific event just a short drive from where Dame Ngaio used to write her world-renowned mysteries,” said Judging Convenor Craig Sisterson. “It was a tough year for our judges. We had a record number of entries, launched a new category, and ended up with eight superb finalists that illustrate how varied local crime writing can be. There was everything from a former All Black entwined in French match-fixing to a robotic private eye.”

Across the board the international judging panel was highly impressed with this year’s finalists, said Sisterson. “Every novel was a strong contender in the eyes of our judges, and we would have been happy to celebrate any of them as deserving winners. But we had to make a choice, and TRUST NO ONE and INSIDE THE BLACK HORSE edged ahead from a deep field. They’re both cracking great crime tales.”

Berard’s debut, which was a finalist for both awards, was inspired by a diary he kept during his years working as an Area Manager for the TAB across the upper North Island after he emigrated from Canada during the mid 1990s. He was mentored during his writing process by Barbara and Chris Else.

The Ngaio Marsh Awards are made annually in Christchurch for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novels written by New Zealand citizens and residents. The Awards’ namesake, Dame Ngaio Marsh, was a Christchurch mystery writer and theatre director renowned worldwide as one of the four “Queens of Crime” of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. More than thirty years after her death, Dame Ngaio’s books remain beloved by many generations of readers. The Ngaio Marsh Awards were established in 2010 with the blessing of Dame Ngaio’s closest living relative, John Dacres-Manning.

Honorary Literary Fellow: Paul Cleave

Congratulations to Paul Cleave, who has been made an Honorary Literary Fellow in the New Zealand Society of Authors Waitangi Day Honours (Waitangi Day is New Zealand's national day).

Well deserved.

HT: Craig Sisterson

Ngaio Marsh Award Winner

** A special thanks to Craig Sisterson for all the work he does on the Ngaio Marsh Award. As a crime fiction reader, I really enjoyed judging the New Zealand contenders! **

Paul Cleave became the Crown Prince of antipodean crime writing when his thriller FIVE MINUTES ALONE was named the winner of the 2015 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel on Sunday night (New Zealand time).

The internationally bestselling author made history when his “gritty and thoroughly absorbing” novel that “evokes complex feelings about retribution and morality” was revealed as the winner before a packed crowd at a lively WORD Christchurch event at the Court Theatre on 4 October.

 “In a year with a remarkable quintet of finalists, it’s fitting that Paul Cleave has become the first author to win the Ngaio Marsh Award twice,” said Judging Convenor Craig Sisterson. “For almost a decade he’s been leading our vanguard on the world stage in what’s becoming a new heyday of local crime writing.”

In FIVE MINUTES ALONE, “wonderfully complex protagonist” Theo Tate has been resurrected, as a cop and human being, after recovering from a coma. He finds himself chasing a killer he can empathise with: a vigilante who is disposing of society’s worst offenders, giving victims of crime their ‘five minutes alone’ with the culprits. But settling old scores is never as simple as it seems, as Tate knows well himself.

The judging panel, consisting of crime fiction experts – authors, critics, and editors – from Scandinavia, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, said FIVE MINUTES ALONE was packed with “moral dilemmas, and great writing, pacing, and characters,” and demanded to be read in one sitting. “The characters are sympathetic and human, never becoming black and white or easily classified as good or bad,” noted one judge. “Cleave’s prose crackles like a campfire, darkly hypnotic and dangerous.”

Cleave had previously won the Ngaio Marsh Award in 2011 for BLOOD MEN. The Award is made annually for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident. Cleave also received a set of Dame Ngaio’s novels courtesy of her publisher HarperCollins, a cash prize provided by WORD Christchurch, and an invite to appear at a European crime writing festival.

For more information on the Ngaio Marsh Award, go to www.facebook.com/NgaioMarshAward or email ngaiomarshaward@gmail.com

Ngaio Marsh Award 2011

Blood Men by Paul Cleave won the 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award. The award was presented at the"Setting the Stage for Murder" event in Christchurch yesterday, as part of The Press Christchurch Writers Festival. Seven judges from New Zealand and across the world chose Cleave's novel above three other finalists including Neil Cross, Paddy Richardson and Alix Bosco.

The judges praised Blood Men, which was set in Christchurch, as a "gruesomely gripping story told in clean, sharp prose, with authentically laconic dialogue and flashes of dark humour". Cleave said it was the first time in six years of being published that he felt like he was being taken seriously in New Zealand. Cleave has sold 600,000 books in 19 countries, but only a tiny fraction of those sales were in New Zealand.

I really enjoyed being a judge for the Ngaio Marsh Award, particularly for being introduced to so many great new to me writers. I want to thank Craig Sisterson for all he does for Kiwi Crime and for including me in the judging.

On another Kiwi note in relationship to the Ngaio Marsh Awards, Alix Bosco's (author of shortlisted Slaughter Falls), true identiy was revealed in the Sunday Star-Times last week. Acclaimed playwright, TV screenwriter, and former Junior All Black Greg McGee 'came out' as Alix Bosco in a large feature in the Star-Times.  Read the article HERE.