The best New Zealand crime novels of 2014

Amazing that we can have a longlist of nine for the 2015 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. All hail Craig Sisterson for organising these awards and keeping them going. Here is Wednesday’s press release:

Three debut novelists and two established authors dipping their creative pens in the crime and mystery well for the first time help bring a fresh look to the longlist for the the 2015 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, revealed today. “It is fantastic to see more and more talented New Zealand writers bringing their unique voices, perspectives, and interests to one of the world’s most popular storytelling genres,” said Judging Convenor Craig Sisterson. “Crime fiction is a broad church nowadays, and this year’s excellent longlist illustrates that well. It will be very interesting to see which of these books the judges prefer.”

The nine longlisted titles are:

Drowning City by Ben Atkins (Random House)
Five Minutes Alone by Paul Cleave (Atria)
Databyte by Cat Connor (Rebel ePublishers)
The Petticoat Men by Barbara Ewing (Head of Zeus)
A History of Crime: the Southern Double-Cross by Dinah Holman (Ravensbourne)
Trilemma by Jennifer Mortimer (Oceanview Publishing)
Swimming in the Dark by Paddy Richardson (Upstart Press)
The Children’s Pond by Tina Shaw (Pointer Press)
Fallout by Paul Thomas (Upstart Press)

The judging panel (crime fiction experts from New Zealand, Australia, the United States, United Kingdom and Iceland) will announce the finalists in May. The winner will be revealed at a special event held later this year in association with WORD Christchurch, which has supported the Award since its establishment in 2010.

The last three on that list were all (modest cough) edited by me, and all made the NZ bestseller list. Paul Cleave, Barbara Ewing and Dinah Holman also have form. Don’t know anything about the other two but they must be very good to be in this company.