Ninety years after Golden Age Queen of Crime Ngaio Marsh published her first mystery, her homeland’s crime writing landscape is going from strength to strength. By CRAIG SISTERSON

The detectives had gathered everyone together in the library setting of Tūranga, the largest public library in the South Island of New Zealand. Witnesses, onlookers, and suspects. Over a lengthy, tough investigation the clues had been followed, evidence gathered, and red herrings avoided. After final questions were put to some prime suspects, it’d be time to unveil the culprits.

It was the type of classic mystery denouement that may have tickled Dame Ngaio herself.

Ninety years after Ngaio Marsh published her first murder mystery, A Man Lay Dead, launching a career that would see the arts-loving, independent woman from Christchurch become a global legend of detective fiction, her literary compatriots gathered a few miles from her house in the Cashmere Hills to celebrate the best of modern Kiwi crime writing.

In her name.

‘It was fantastic, we had a great time, and there were lots of great authors we got to chat to,’ said booksellers and authors Gareth and Louise Ward, aka The Bookshop Detectives, who MC-ed the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards evening at the recent WORD Christchurch Festival.

In the 15th edition of Aotearoa’s annual awards celebrating excellence in crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing, Rotorua author and legal researcher Claire Baylis won Best First Novel for her harrowing examination of jury beliefs and biases in Dice. Scotland-based Kiwi D V Bishop scooped Best Novel for his Renaissance Florence-set mystery Ritual of Fire. Wellington writer Jennifer Lane joined rare company when she won Best Kids/YA for her mystery, Miracle, set in smalltown Australia akin to where Lane grew up.

While the puzzling whodunnits of Dame Ngaio and her fellow Queens of Crime of the Golden Age – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham – are still beloved around the world, crime writing itself has come a long way. Nowadays, at its best, it can often be the modern social novel, taking readers into many different lives, peeling back the layers and exploring key questions and tough issues faced by individuals and society.

The 2024 Ngaio’s winners, along with the dazzling array of finalists, underline that point.

Besides their compelling storylines, each dug deep into character and place. And while the genre may often be talked about in terms of puzzling mysteries, high-stakes action, or twisting endings, the winning trio all featured memorable characters under extreme pressure.

‘Cesare Aldo is a gay man at a time and place in history where that sexuality is punishable, potentially, by death,’ said D V Bishop, speaking via video about Best Novel winner Ritual of Fire.

‘Though he enforces the law, he’s also on the wrong side of the law as far as the law is concerned … So Aldo believes in justice much more than he believes in the rule of law, which makes him a really interesting, multi-faceted character to work with, and to write.’

The Ngaio’s international judging panel praised Ritual of Fire for vividly evoking glorious but menacing Medici-era Florence, with ‘convincing historical detail seamlessly woven into a terrific story that captures attention throughout’ and crafting great characters who are facing dilemmas and issues that still echo across the centuries into our modern times.

Fellow Best Novel finalists included Māori storyteller Jill Johnson’s Devil’s Breath, a first mystery starring neurodivergent professor of botanical toxicology Eustacia Rose, and the long-awaited return of Detective Sam Shephard in Dunedin author and Traitors NZ star Vanda Symon’s Expectant. Two-time Acorn Prize for Fiction winner Catherine Chidgey was also in the mix with her ‘stunning, beautifully written’ psychological thriller Pet, as was BAFTA-winning Kiwi screenwriter Anthony McCarten for terrifying high-tech thriller Going Zero, which explores mass surveillance in a ticking-clock contest gone horribly wrong. Kiwi-born Melbourne writer Gabriel Bergmoser was praised for his ‘tense and breath-stealing’ thriller The Caretaker, while former law lecturer Claire Baylis offered readers a jury-eyed view of sexual assault trials and the criminal justice system in ‘devastating’ debut Dice.

Before Bishop was named winner of Best Novel, the celebrations began with Jennifer Lane, who grew up in New South Wales rural village Cambewarra, making history as the winner of Best Kids/YA Book for Miracle, which stars an Aussie teen trying to deal with devastating events and clear her father’s name after he’s arrested for a brutal attack. The judges praised Miracle as ‘poignant and funny, with a complex storyline and memorable, well-developed characters including a fascinating heroine with her authentic adolescent voice’.

By winning her second Ngaio Marsh Award, Lane joins a rare group of Kiwi storytellers, alongside Paul Cleave, Jacqueline Bublitz, and Michael Bennett, to have multiple Ngaios.

Lane had previously won Best First Novel in 2018 for All Our Secrets, another crime tale set in small-town Australia. This year that honour went to Lane’s fellow International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) graduate Claire Baylis for Dice, a unique courtroom drama inspired by Baylis’s research for the trans-Tasman Jury Project. Her debut gives readers insights into harsh realities in the criminal justice system through the eyes and biases of 12 jurors serving on a tricky sexual assault case.

‘Both timely and sensitively handled, there is so much that’s clever and surprising about Dice,’ said the judges. ‘Inventive, devastating, infuriating.’

Ninety years on from Dame Ngaio’s debut, Kiwi writers are – like their Aussie counterparts – continuing to craft world-class crime and thriller stories deserving of global attention. •