The Ngaio Marsh Awards celebrate excellence in New Zealand crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. Named for New Zealand’s own “Queen of Crime,” Dame Ngaio Marsh, the awards are held annually at the WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival. The ceremony now presents four awards: Best Crime Novel, Best First Novel, Best Non Fiction and Best Young Readers.
The 2025 longlist for Best Crime Novel has been announced – and it’s a great mix of authors, settings, and stories! 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 the Court Theatre on Thursday, 25 September: https://wordchristchurch.co.nz/…/the-ngaio-marsh…/
| Ngaio Marsh 2025 Longlist Best Crime Novel | ||
|---|---|---|
| Michael Bennett | Return to Blood | Hana Westerman has left Auckland and her career as a detective behind her. Settled in a quiet coastal town, all she wants is a fresh start. The discovery of a skeleton in the dunes near her house changes everything. The remains are those of a young Maori woman who went missing four years before, and Hana has a connection to the case. Twenty years ago, a schoolfriend of hers was found buried in the exact same spot. Her killer died in prison, but did the police get the wrong man? And if he was innocent, then why did he plead guilty? |
| Gabriel Bergmoser | The Hitchhiker | A twisted cat-and-mouse game set in the desolate expanse of the Australian outback, The Hitchhiker is a tense, sun-beaten and savage edge-of-your-seat thriller. |
| D.V Bishop | A Divine Fury | A religious serial killer is haunting Florence and only Cesare Aldo can stop them. A Divine Fury is an atmospheric historical thriller set in Renaissance Italy. |
| Jacqueline Bublitz | Leave the Girls Behind | A taut suspense thriller, overlaid with a moving exploration of the ways in which violent crime ricochets through the lives of those left behind. |
| Sherryl Clark | Woman, Missing | Gutsy new P.I. Lou Alcott takes charge in this brilliantly crafted thriller. Twisty, gritty and unputdownable, in this story the underdog is fighting back. She’s the one to turn to when you need saving. But first she has to save herself… |
| Jill Johnson | Hell's Bells | Professor Eustacia Rose is back to solve another murder using her extensive knowledge of botany. With a quirky protagonist, dark academia aesthetic and an array of exotic poisonous plants, this unique spin on the classic murder mystery novel. |
| Tina Makereti | The Mires | The Mires is a tender and fierce novel that asks what we do when faced with things we don’t understand. Is our impulse to destroy or connect? |
| William McCartney | A Fly Under the Radar | Lawyers, drugs, deaths, and sneakiness, in New Zealand. A ripping yarn. It’s cantankerous and unexpected, with an eccentric cast that includes a millennial side-kick, a conniving landlord, a dangerous accountant, and starring a misanthropic grump who unwillingly becomes a criminal mastermind. |
| Charity Norman | Home Truths | Home Truths is a suspense-filled thriller exploring family dynamics and the impact of conspiracy theories on personal relationships. |
| J.P Pomare | 17 Years Later | The violent slaughter of the Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation. Seventeen years later, evidence emerges that casts new light on the Primroses - and who might have wanted them dead. |
| Cristina Sanders | Okiwi Brown | In the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown. When a body is discovered on the beach, it could be that a drunken man has drowned. But it could be that the gathered witnesses know something more. |
| Tina Shaw | A House Built on Sand | Full of suspense and heartbreak, A House Built on Sand is a haunting novel about family secrets, the hazards of memory and ghosts that linger. |
| Gavin Strawhan | The Call | Gripping and suspenseful, with a killer ending, The Call propels the reader into the world of a terrifying new kind of gang – and introduces a major new talent in crime writing. |
| Vanda Symon | Prey | Fresh from maternity leave, Dunedin detective Sam Shephard investigates the unsolved murder of a highly esteemed church minister … with potentially deadly consequences. New Queen of New Zealand Crime, Vanda Symon, returns with a page-turning, riveting new Sam Shephard mystery. |
| Gareth & Louise Ward | The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone | Two small-town booksellers (and their cowardly dog) solve a decades-old murder-mystery in this witty debut novel, full of literary clues, sparkling dialogue, and comedic insights into the world of bookshops. |
| Ngaio Marsh Awards Winners List | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ngaio Marsh Award for Younger Readers | |||
| 2024 | Jennifer Lane | Miracle | Born in the middle of Australia's biggest-ever earthquake, Miracle is fourteen when her world crumbles. Thanks to her dad's new job at Compassionate Cremations - which falls under suspicion for Boorunga's spate of sudden deaths - the entire town turns against her family. Miracle is tormented by her classmates, even by Oli, the boy she can't get out of her head. She fears for her agoraphobic mother and for her angelic, quake-damaged brother. When Oli plays a cruel trick on Miracle, a chain of devastating events is set off. Then her dad is arrested. Miracle takes the full weight on her shoulders. How can she convince the town of her dad's innocence? |
| 2021 | Brian Falkner | Katipo Joe | Joseph St. George is a young New Zealander, the son of diplomats in 1930s Berlin. But the Nazis are on the rise and the world is on a spinning path to destruction. Joe's world is about to change, violently. After a narrow escape from Germany with his mother, Joe is recruited by MI5 and given a mission to infiltrate the Hitler Youth movement. From vital convoys across the frozen North Atlantic, to the terror of the London Blitz, to the shadowy world of the French Resistance, this is Joe's world. Inspired by true events, Katipo Joe is a story of incredible heroism, unlikely friendships and unbearable tragedy, set against the backdrop of World War Two |
| Ngaio Marsh Award for First Best Novel | |||
| 2024 | Claire Baylis | Dice | Four teenage boys invent a sex game based on the toss of a dice. The police charge them with multiple sexual offences against three teenage girls. Twelve jurors must work out what actually happened. How does the jury find? Dice is a stunning courtroom drama told from the perspective of a diverse group of ordinary people -- the jury. How will twelve women and men of different ages, backgrounds and beliefs decide whether consent was given or crimes were committed? In this dazzlingly accomplished and gripping debut novel, the story is told through the eyes of each juror as the trial unfolds, and evidence is presented, withheld, fragmented and retold by different witnesses. Will the verdict deliver justice or punish the innocent? Where does the truth lie? |
| 2023 | Michael Bennett | Better the Blood | Hana Westerman is a tenacious Māori detective juggling single motherhood and the pressures of her career in Auckland's Central Investigation Branch. When she's led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man hanging in a secret room. As Hana and her team work to track down the killer, other deaths lead her to think that they are searching for New Zealand's first serial killer. With little to go on, Hana must use all her experience as a police officer to try and find a motive to these apparently unrelated murders. What she eventually discovers is a link to an historic crime that leads back to the brutal bloody colonisation of New Zealand. When the pursuit becomes frighteningly personal, Hana realises that her heritage and knowledge are their only keys to finding the killer. But as the murders continue, it seems that the killer's agenda of revenge may include Hana and her family. |
| 2022 | Jacqueline Bublitz | Before You Knew My Name | Dead girls don't usually get to tell their story, but Alice Lee has always been a different type of girl. When she arrives in New York on her eighteenth birthday, carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen Leica in her bag, Alice is a plucky teenager looking to start a new life away from her dark past. Now she's 'Jane Doe', 'Riverside Jane', an unidentified body on a slab at City Morgue. Newspaper headlines briefly report that 'the body was discovered by a jogger'. Ruby Jones is a lonely Australian woman trying to put distance between herself and a destructive relationship back home, and is struggling in the aftermath of being the person to find Alice's body. When she encounters Death Club, a small group of misfits who meet at bars around the city to discuss death and dying, she finds a safe space to explore her increasing obsession with the girl and her unidentified killer. Alice, seemingly stuck between life and death, narrates Ruby's story, hoping that this woman will help her come to terms with what happened and help identify her body. From this first, devastating encounter, an enduring connection between the two women is formed. One that will eventually lead to the man who murdered Alice. |
| Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel | |||
| 2024 | D.V Bishop | Ritual of Fire | Florence. Summer, 1538. A night patrol finds a wealthy merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city's main square. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way. Does this new killing mean his fanatical disciples are reviving the monk's regime of holy terror? Cesare Aldo is busy hunting thieves in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the killing. When another merchant is burned alive in public, the rich start fleeing to their country estates. But the Tuscan hills can also be dangerous. Growing religious fervour and a scorching heatwave drives the city ever closer to madness. Meanwhile, someone is stalking those powerful men who forged lifelong bonds in the dark days of Savonarola. Unless Aldo and Strocchi work together, all of Florence will be consumed by an inferno of death and destruction. |
| 2023 | Charity Norman | Remember Me | They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth. A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman's disappearance twenty-five years ago. After years of living overseas, Emily Kirkland returns to New Zealand to care for her father, Felix, who suffers from dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time - and to glimpse shattering truths about his past. Truths she'd rather were kept buried. |
| 2022 | Jacqueline Bublitz | Before You Knew My Name | Dead girls don't usually get to tell their story, but Alice Lee has always been a different type of girl. When she arrives in New York on her eighteenth birthday, carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen Leica in her bag, Alice is a plucky teenager looking to start a new life away from her dark past. Now she's 'Jane Doe', 'Riverside Jane', an unidentified body on a slab at City Morgue. Newspaper headlines briefly report that 'the body was discovered by a jogger'. Ruby Jones is a lonely Australian woman trying to put distance between herself and a destructive relationship back home, and is struggling in the aftermath of being the person to find Alice's body. When she encounters Death Club, a small group of misfits who meet at bars around the city to discuss death and dying, she finds a safe space to explore her increasing obsession with the girl and her unidentified killer. Alice, seemingly stuck between life and death, narrates Ruby's story, hoping that this woman will help her come to terms with what happened and help identify her body. From this first, devastating encounter, an enduring connection between the two women is formed. One that will eventually lead to the man who murdered Alice. |
| Ngaio Marsh Award for Non-Fiction (awarded biennially) | |||
| 2023 | Steve Braunias | Missing Persons | Twelve extraordinary tales of disappearance: a collection of true crime writing by New Zealand's award-winning master of non-fiction. Former journalist Murray Mason, found dead in the Auckland Domain; the mysterious death of Socksay Chansy, found dead in a graveyard by the sea; the tragic disappearance of backpacker Grace Millane, victim of public enemy #1; the enduring mystery of the Lundy family murders... These are stories about how some New Zealanders go missing - the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. |
| 2021 | Martin Van Beynen | Black Hands: Inside the Bain Family Murders | This is the story of a mass-murder that divided a nation. It's a story that began in a rickety old home on a cold June morning in 1994, where five members of a seemingly ordinary New Zealand family were gunned down. There were two suspects. One lay dead from a single bullet to the head. The other was the only survivor: David Bain. Since then the country has asked: Who killed the Bain family? David, or his father Robin? And why? Award-winning journalist Martin van Beynen has covered the Bain story closely for decades. His 2017 Stuff podcast, Black Hands - based on the manuscript for this book - was a runaway success in New Zealand and overseas, downloaded more than 4 million times and topping the charts in New Zealand and around the world. Now, van Beynen brings the story up to date for 2020, exploring the case from start to finish, picking through evidence old and new, plumbing the mysteries and motives, interviewing never-before-spoken-to witnesses and laying out the complex police investigation and judicial processes, seeking to finally answer the question: Who was the killer? |
| 2019 | Kelly Dennett | The Short Life and Mysterious Death of Jane Furlong | The case of who abducted and murdered teenager Jane Furlong is one of New Zealand’s most enduring mysteries. Jane was 17 when she disappeared off Auckland’s Karangahape Road in 1993. She was a girlfriend, a daughter, a sex worker, and the mother of a young baby. Her disappearance made sensational headlines across the country, particularly when it was linked to the sex crimes of a wealthy businessman, and it became known that Jane had been about to appear as a witness in his and another court case. Although the police identified a number of suspects, no one has ever been charged over Jane’s disappearance. Her body was found in 2012, 20 years later, in sand dunes at Sunset Beach in Port Waikato. The case gained fresh momentum – but still no arrests. Court reporter Kelly Dennett became interested after noticing Jane Furlong’s mother sitting alone in a courtroom during a murder trial. Over time she gained her confidence and learned intimate details of Jane’s life, including what she wrote in her extensive diaries. She also gained unique access to Jane’s boyfriend – conducting the first media interviews he has ever granted – and her close friends. Police officers talked candidly about the case and she carried out detailed research into the suspects, focusing on one man in particular, and eliminating others. What she found will shock you. |
