Longlist For 2023 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel Announced
30 June 2023
Supporting, highlighting and celebrating excellence in crime, mystery and thriller storytelling from New Zealand writers, the Ngaio Marsh Awards is now in its thirteenth year. We’re pleased to see a number of Ulverscroft titles featured on the longlist for their Best Novel Award.
The Doctor's Wife by Fiona Sussman
Published in large print in August 2023 and CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in October 2023.
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...
Better The Blood by Michael Bennett
Published in large print and CD and MP3 CD audiobook in September 2022.
Hana Westerman is a tenacious Maori 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 culprit, 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.
Then the pursuit becomes frighteningly personal, and Hana realises that, whilst her heritage is key to finding the killer, their agenda of revenge may include her - and her family...
The Pain Tourist by Paul Cleave
Published in large print in February 2023.
James Garrett was critically injured when he was shot following his parents' execution. Nobody expected him to waken from a deep, traumatic coma. When he does, nine years later, Detective Inspector Rebecca Kent is tasked with closing the case that her now-retired colleague Theodore Tate failed to solve almost a decade ago.
But between that, and hunting for Copy Joe - a murderer on a spree, who's imitating Christchurch's most notorious serial killer - she's going to need Tate's help. Especially once they learn that James has not only lived out another life in his years-long coma, but also knows things he shouldn't be able to. And Copy Joe isn't the only serial killer in town...