15 Years of the Ngaios: our first trophy and first winner, belatedly photographed

Craig on some Tuesdays.

Kia ora and gidday everyone, I hope you’ve all been enjoying a fabulous start to Spring (if you're in the Southern Hemisphere where I grew up) or Autumn aka Fall for those of us in the north. 

I've been enjoying some wonderful crime fiction festivals in the UK over summer - Capital Crime in June, the CWA Daggers and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in July, Bute Noir in August, and most recently, Bloody Scotland in Stirling, just last weekend. Other pals headed to Bouchercon in New Orleans. 

As crime/thriller fans, we're blessed with a wonderful array of events, days and weekends that I find are a really energising and invigorating time, getting to catch up with book-loving friends old and new, chair a few panels, and generally soak in book love and hang out with creative people who create something from nothing, to entertain us. 

The 2025 events season is winding down here in the UK, though there are still some gems like Chiltern Kills still to come on the calendar. And next week, back home in Aotearoa, we have the 15th anniversary of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, Aotearoa New Zealand's prestigious local prizes for crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. 

Superb Kiwi crime writer Paul Cleave, who's an international bestseller
and Edgar nominee, along with being our only 3x Ngaios winner

When the Ngaio Marsh Awards was originally launched in 2010, it marked a new era in New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing (later nicknamed #yeahnoir, thanks Steph Soper).

We finally had an award to celebrate our best Kiwi works in the world's most popular storytelling genre. Murmurs around the local literary world were largely positive, and a big September 200 event - including a murder mystery-themed performance by the famous Court Theatre - was scheduled to headline that year's Christchurch Writers Festival in the prime Saturday night slot.

Unfortunately, everything changed when a few days beforehand the first of two major earthquakes struck Christchurch. Fortunately no lives were lost then (unlike the devastating 'quake a few months later), but infrastructure was badly damaged, and the festival was cancelled. Then, in December 200 a good crowd turned out for a one-off special event, fundraising for earthquake recovery, complete with finalists Vanda Symon and Neil Cross, and Christchurch crime writer Paul Cleave. Unfortunately, as s/he was writing under a pseudonym at that time, the inaugural winner was not there to claim their well-earned prize in person: Alix Bosco for their terrific debut thriller CUT & RUN.

For a while we thought we may see our first Ngaios winner onscreen, as it was in development, with Robyn Malcolm set to star as heroine Anna Markunas, a middle-aged legal researcher who gets caught up in a celebrity murder case. But we never had a picture of our very first winner with the first award - a terrific and distinctive handcrafted trophy created by sculptor Gina Ferguson. We did get some great pics of Paul Cleave with his 2011 Ngaio, and Neil Cross (right) with his 2012 one, etc.

Our original Ngaios evening was still a fabulous night, and it was great to have New Zealand crime fiction finally being celebrated in such a way. The Ngaio Marsh Awards have gone from strength to strength in the years since, but as founder of the Ngaios it did irk me for a while that we didn't have a picture of Greg McGee (who 'came out' as Alix Bosco in 2011) with the very first trophy.

Fortunately, a few years later, thanks to talented Kiwi photographer Maja Moritz, we did. 

The lovely photo above was part of a photographic series of 43 New Zealand authors that Moritz did for DPA Picture Alliance in Germany in association with New Zealand being the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. As part of that project, Moritz took some photos of Greg McGee at his house, including this one of him holding up the Ngaio Marsh Award he'd won as 'Alix Bosco' a couple of years before. Later, Maja and I connected, and she kindly let us use the pic of Greg and the Ngaios trophy.

Thank you Maja. As we approach our 15th anniversary event in Christchurch next Thursday night, 25 September, we still really appreciate you sharing your talent, and work, with us in our early years. So who will be taking pics with Ngaios trophies in 2025? You can find out next Thursday at "The Ngaio Marsh Awards and The Murderous Mystery" at Turanga Christchurch City Libraries from 6pm. 

And for any readers in the Canterbury area, here's some further and details for last-minute tickets: https://wordchristchurch.co.nz/programme/the-ngaio-marsh-awards-and-the-murderous-mystery/

Here are the prime suspects (2025 finalists) who are in the running, across three categories. 

BEST NON-FICTION

• THE TRIALS OF NURSE KERR by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman Books)
• THE SURVIVORS by Steve Braunias (HarperCollins)
• THE CREWE MURDERS by Kirsty Johnstone & James Hollings (Massey Uni Press)
• THE LAST SECRET AGENT by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
• GANGSTER’S PARADISE by Jared Savage (HarperCollins)
• FAR NORTH by David White & Angus Gillies (Upstart Press)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

• DARK SKY by Marie Connolly (Quentin Wilson Publishing)
• LIE DOWN WITH DOGS by Syd Knight (Rusty Hills)
• A FLY UNDER THE RADAR by William McCartney 
• THE DEFIANCE OF FRANCES DICKINSON by Wendy Parkins (Affirm Press)
• THE CALL by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• KISS OF DEATH by Stephen Tester (Heritage Press)

BEST NOVEL

• RETURN TO BLOOD by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
• A DIVINE FURY by DV Bishop (Macmillan)
• WOMAN, MISSING by Sherryl Clark (HarperCollins)
• HOME TRUTHS by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)
• 17 YEARS LATER by JP Pomare (Hachette)
• THE CALL by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• PREY by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

So, whodunnit and whowunnit? We'll find out very soon who's joining Greg McGee and several other superb Kiwi crime, mystery, and thriller writers on our Ngaio Marsh Awards roll of honour. 

Have you read any of the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists? If so, which are your faves?

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.

Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi

(With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive, ie everybody has something to offer, and by working together we can all flourish.)