Inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award: Best Crime Novel Finalists

Finalists for the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel were announced today.

The Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel will be presented at a ceremony at the upcoming The Press Christchurch Writers’ Festival in September. The award is given for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident, published in New Zealand during 2009. A panel of seven local and international judges has been considering the best of locally written crime and thriller fiction published last year.

The three finalists are:

CUT & RUN by Alix Bosco (Penguin)
BURIAL by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)
CONTAINMENT by Vanda Symon (Penguin)

The winner of the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel will be announced at a ceremony at the conclusion of the “Setting the Stage for Murder” event at the Festival on the evening of Friday 10 September 2010.

The Awards namesake, Dame Ngaio Marsh, is renowned worldwide as one of the four “Queens of Crime” of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, having published 32 novels featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn between 1934 and her death in 1982. With sales in the millions, her books are still in print to this day, Dame Ngaio is possibly New Zealand’s bestselling author, ever.

For more information, please contact:
Craig Sisterson, Judging Convenor: craigsisterson@hotmail.com or (021) 184 1206