Character first

Three cracking reads that won the three categories of the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards

Craig every second Tuesday.

Kia ora and gidday everyone.

Late last Friday night in Aotearoa/New Zealand, a trio of superb storytellers were honoured in Christchurch, the hometown of Golden Age mystery queen Dame Ngaio Marsh, for their recent books which combined exquisite crime storytelling with rich characters studies, fictional and factual, and had each been chosen by international judging panels as the winners of the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards. 

Earlier this month I shared a little bit about this year's Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists, the fourteenth season of national crime, mystery, and thriller writing prizes I helped establish back in 2010. 

It's a little strange to reflect on all that's happened since 2010, in life alongside the Ngaios. 

As I noted in a founder's speech read out on Friday night in Christchurch (unfortunately I couldn't be there in person), our national crime, mystery, thriller and suspense writing awards are now a teenager. And like our wonderful finalist Renée, a rangatira (chief) of Kiwi storytelling and icon of creative arts, showed in her Ngaios finalist mystery BLOOD MATTERS with aspiring private eye Bella Rose, adolescents are capable of amazing things, even as they’re still finding their way.

While New Zealand is a relatively small country, by population, on the world stage, for more than a century it has 'punched above its weight' in many fields, from science to sports. Back home we widely accept, even expect, our Kiwi sportspeople to be among the best in the world. It’s just taken us a little longer to realise our creative artists and storytellers can be, and are being, too.

2023 Ngaio Marsh Award winners Michael Bennett (Best First Novel), 
Charity Norman (Best Novel) and Steve Braunias (Best Non-Fiction)

On Friday night, Hawke’s Bay author Charity Norman won Best Novel for Remember Me, while renowned journalist Steve Braunias scooped Best Non-Fiction for Missing Persons, and acclaimed Māori  filmmaker and author Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) made Ngaios history when he was named the winner of Best First Novel for Better the Blood. Bennett became the first storyteller to collect fiction and non-fiction categories at the Ngaio Marsh Awards, having won the first-ever Best Non-Fiction prize in 2017 for In Dark Places: The Confessions of Teina Pora and an Ex-cop's Fight for Justice. Braunias was a finalist that year for The Scene of the Crime.

From all reports, it was a superb night that fittingly capped an outstanding year for New Zealand crime writing and the Ngaio Marsh Awards, with our terrifically strong and varied group of finalists. The international judging panels for this year’s Ngaios comprised leading crime fiction critics, editors, and authors from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, Scotland, and the United States.

Some of the 2023 Ngaios finalists being honoured onstage

On Friday night, following a celebratory pub quiz held at Tūranga in association with WORD Christchurch, and all the finalists in attendance being celebrated onstage, Kiwi crime queen and recent Traitors NZ star Vanda Symon first announced Braunias as the winner of the biennial Best Non-Fiction prize for Missing Persons, his collection of 12 extraordinary tales of death and disappearance in Aotearoa. “A fascinating investigation of where people had become lost: to society, themselves, their families,” said the judges. “His writing is so informed and informative. Braunias has put in the legwork, knows his material, and because of that manages to make each piece something personal.”

The Best First Novel judges praised Bennett's Better the Blood, the tale of a Māori detective confronting her own heritage while hunting a serial killer, as an “audacious and powerful blend of history, polemic, and crime thriller” that upends the typical serial-killer sleuth dynamic while exploring the violence and legacy of colonisation. Winning a Ngaio is the latest accolade for Bennett’s crime fiction debut, which has also been listed for several others awards in both hemispheres, named on ‘best of the year’ lists in the UK and US, translated into several European languages, and earlier this year became the first detective novel ever shortlisted for the Acorn Prize for Fiction.

An emotional Michael Bennett accepting the Best First Novel prize
for his ground-breaking indigenous thriller Better The Blood

Norman, a three-time Ngaios finalist who was born in Uganda and worked as a barrister in the north of England before emigrating to rural New Zealand twenty years ago, was “overwhelmed” when Symon announced she’d won Best Novel for Remember Me, a tale set in the Ruahine Ranges where a family and community are upturned by disturbing revelations about a young woman’s disappearance. 

“There’s an Olympian degree of difficulty in this novel,” said the international judging panel. “To write about characters facing devastating, mind-altering health diagnoses and blend these everyday tragedies – all too familiar to some readers – into an elevated suspense novel, while steering clear of mawkishness and self-pity … Remember Me is an astounding piece of work.”

Kiwi crime queen Vanda Symon with Best Novel winner Charity Norman

All in all it's been another great year for Kiwi crime and thriller writing, and the Ngaio Marsh Awards. We'll be taking a wee breath over the coming weeks and festive season before gearing up for our 15th season in the New Year, with a variety of events around the country leading up to next year's Ngaios. 

Have you read any New Zealand crime or thriller novels lately? 

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'll be ending my fortnightly posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

Poipoia te kākano kia puawai

(Nurture the seed and it will blossom.)