Mystery Melange

This year's shortlists were revealed for the Ngaio Marsh Awards that honor the best crime, mystery, or thriller novels written by a New Zealand citizen or resident and published in New Zealand during the previous year. The winners will be announced at a special streaming event on Saturday October 30, held in association with the WORD Christchurch festival.

Best novel:

The Murder Club (Nikki Crutchley, Oak House Press)
Sprigs (Brannavan Gnanalingam, Lawrence and Gibson)
The Tally Stick (Carl Nixon, RHNZ Vintage)
The Secrets of Strangers (Charity Norman, A&U)
Tell Me Lies (J P Pomare, Hachette)

Best first novel:

The Girl in the Mirror (Rose Carlyle, A&U)
The Beautiful Dead (Kim Hunt)
Where the Truth Lies (Karina Kilmore, S&S)
For Reasons of Their Own (Chris Stuart, Original Sin)
While the Fantail Lives (Alan Titchall, Devon Media)

Best nonfiction (biennial):

Weed: A New Zealand story (James Borrowdale, Penguin)
Rock College: An unofficial history of Mount Eden Prison (Mark Derby, Massey University Press)
From Dog Collar to Dog Collar (Bruce Howat)
Gangland (Jared Savage, HarperCollins NZ)
Black Hands: Inside the Bain family murders (Martin Van Beynen, PRHNZ).

Best YA novel:

Katipo Joe (Brian Falkner, Scholastic NZ)
Red Edge (Des Hunt, Scholastic NZ)
A Trio of Sophies (Eileen Merriman, Penguin)
Deadhead (Glenn Wood, OneTree House).

 

The ten finalists were announced for the 2021 Amazon Publishing New Voices Award. The Capital Crime advisory board along with Amazon Publishing editor, Victoria Haslam, and Thomas & Mercer author, Tariq Ashkanani, will decide on the winner in the coming weeks.

The San Francisco Public Library, in partnership with the NorCal Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, hosted a panel last evening with Michael Nava curating a panel of Latinx authors discussing their books, writing, and their inspirations. Participating authors included Alex Segura, Raquel V. Reyes, Richie Narvaez, and Lucha Corpi. You can catch a replay of that event here.

The Guardian's Dalya Alberge recently made note of Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans, a writer of spy thrillers during the mid twentieth century. His novel, The Darkroom of Damocles, was published before John le Carré's iconic work, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and Hermans long maintained that le Carré plagiarized from his work.

Janet Rudolph posted an updated short list of mysteries that take place on Rosh Hashanah, the Days of Awe, and/or Yom Kippur.

In honor of Dame Agatha's birthday, Liberty Hardy compiled some of the best references to Agatha Christie in contemporary literature and pop culture.

And you thought humans were the only ones on this planet to commit crimes.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Susan Smith's Dream" by Sally Weston Ziph.

In the Q&A roundup, Colson Whitehead spoke with CrimeReads about why he wrote a heist novel to tell the story of New York; the Stiletto Gang chatted with Debra Sennefelder, author of the Food Blogger Mystery series and the Resale Boutique Mystery series, both published by Kensington; Writers Who Kill chatted with Nupur Tustin about her Celine Skye Psychic Mysteries and her Joseph Haydn Mysteries; Frances Hight stopped by CrimeScene to discuss her short crime fiction and her debut novel, West Texas Dead; and J.B. Stevens interviewed Tori Eldridge, author of The Ninja Betrayed, the third book in her Lily Wong series, for Criminal Element.