Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

I’ve been truly privileged this year to be a part of the judging panel for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. The Ngaio Marsh Awards are New Zealand’s top prize for crime writing, and this year, I’m pleased to say that there have been some excellent entries. Some fine crime fiction comes out of New Zealand, and it’s been difficult to choose from among the submissions. But…here is this year’s short list:

 

Better the Blood – Michael Bennett         

The blurb:

A tenacious Māori detective, Hana Westerman juggles single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man ritualistically hanging in a secret room and a puzzling inward-curving inscription. Delving into the investigation after a second, apparently unrelated, death, she uncovers a chilling connection to an historic crime: 160 years before, during the brutal and bloody British colonization of New Zealand, a troop of colonial soldiers unjustly executed a Māori Chief. 

Hana realizes that the murders are utu—the Māori tradition of rebalancing for the crime committed eight generations ago. There were six soldiers in the British troop, and since descendants of two of the soldiers have been killed, four more potential murders remain. Hana is thus hunting New Zealand’s first serial killer.

 The pursuit soon becomes frighteningly personal, recalling the painful event, two decades before, when Hana, then a new cop, was part of a police team sent to end by force a land rights occupation by indigenous peoples on the same ancestral mountain where the Chief was killed, calling once more into question her loyalty to her roots. Worse still, a genealogical link to the British soldiers brings the case terrifyingly close to Hana’s own family.

 

The Slow Roll – Simon Lendrum

The blurb:

It seemed a simple request. “Can you find my daughter who has run away?” But for professional gambler O’Malley, life isn’t that simple.

 There is the murder of one of his poker partners, the attention of drug dealers, money launderers, the police, the gangs, and just to top it all off there is his intriguing girlfriend Claire, who just seems to be better at part-time sleuthing than he is. 

No, nothing is simple for O’Malley.

 

Remember Me – Charity Norman 

 The blurb:

‘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 returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has 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.

Are some secrets best left buried?

 

Blood Matters – Renée

 The blurb:

Puti Derrell likes to go running at midnight. But Porohiwi doesn’t feel safe anymore. There’s an unsettling unease that’s lingering in the air…

 The first thing she notices is the smell. But that’s not the worst thing. It’s not even the rope around his neck. It’s the strange mask over his face. Someone has murdered her grandfather. 

Puti is reluctantly thrust into a dangerous investigation to catch her grandfather’s killer. But it’s the last thing she needs right now. She’s just become guardian to her ten-year-old niece and unexpected owner of her late sister’s bookshop. 

Then another body turns up, and that makes two local men who have been strangled to death. Someone is sending a disturbing message. 

Puti finds herself entangled in a treacherous web of deceit, where the most sinister secrets lie closest to home . . .

 

Exit .45 – Ben Sanders

The blurb:

When a former NYPD colleague is shot dead in front of him, Private Investigator Marshall Grade discovers there’s far more to the killing than meets the eye. 

Ray Vialoux is in trouble. Big trouble. And he needs Marshall Grade’s help. 

Reluctantly, Grade agrees to meet. Over dinner in a Brooklyn restaurant, he learns that his former NYPD colleague owes money – a lot of money – to the wrong people. But the conversation is cut short by gunfire, and suddenly Ray is lying dead on the restaurant floor. 

As Marshall investigates the circumstances leading up to the murder, tracking down the drug dealers, bag men, bent cops and mob players within Ray’s orbit, it becomes clear there’s far more to the killing than a gambling debt. Just who is responsible for Vialoux’s death…and why? What secrets are his family hiding? And can Marshall find the answers before his own history marks him as the prime suspect?

 The Doctor’s Wife – Fiona Sussman  

The blurb:

Nothing in pottery teacher Stan Andino’s regular and uneventful existence has prepared him for the moment he discovers his wife naked, except for a black apron, bleaching the lounge carpet with a sponge. A CT scan one week later explains it: Carmen has a brain tumour. As Stan and his teenage sons grapple with the diagnosis and frightening personality changes in their wife and mother, longstanding family friends Austin and Tibbie Lamb do everything possible to assist the Andinos during their time of crisis. Austin, their GP, oversees Carmen’s medical care, while Tibbie picks up on the home front. Then Tibbie’s body is discovered at the bottom of Browns Bay cliffs. DS Ramesh Bandara and his partner – astute, socially awkward DC Hilary Stark – are assigned to the case. And they will discover that Tibbie’s demise was no accident . . .

 

Blue Hotel – Chad Taylor

The blurb:

In 1987, leather-clad tourist Blanca Nul goes missing in small-town New Zealand. Local reporter Ray Moody, washed-up and over-imbibing, gets a scoop the foreigner modelled for a pornographic magazine. He chases the story but crashes his car and loses his job. 

A year to the day after she was reported missing, Blanca is mysteriously sighted a second time. Ray sees a chance to revisit the missing person story and revive his career. The doppelganger death is identified as local goth Amber Drake and labelled a suicide, but Ray is not convinced. He discovers Amber was a risk-taker with a darker purpose. She frequented the notorious S&M club Blue Hotel where the rich and powerful engaged their fantasies in anonymity. 

As he searches for the real story, Ray will learn how desperate, damaged and lonely people from all walks of life can be, and that the truth is hard-won and painful.

  The winner will be announced in mid-late September. Watch this space!

 

 *NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Shihad’s Wait and See.