Kiwi crime holds #1 bestseller spot!

In further great news for Kiwi crime fiction in general, and young debutant Ben Sanders in particular, THE FALLEN has retained the #1 spot on the New Zealand Adult Fiction bestseller list in its second week of release!

This is great news, and the first time in a long time that I can remember a New Zealand crime novel topping the local bestseller list for two weeks running. Hopefully this is the start of a trend (or further growth of a trend that had already slowly started) of New Zealand readers being a bit more willing to buy and try our local crime and thriller authors.

With all the great things happening, the media starting to talk about Kiwi crime a bit more, and with the upcoming The Press Christchurch Writers' Festival, the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, and some other upcoming articles in major publications (eg The Listener) on Kiwi crime, I really feel something is building here.

In further good news, THE IHAKA TRILOGY by Paul Thomas also rose from #8 on the bestseller list last week, to #3 this week. Hopefully as a bit more publicity comes out about SLAUGHTER FALLS (there has been little if anything yet), which has also recently been released, that may also jump up onto the list. It would be great to have a Kiwi crime trifecta.

You can read my review of THE FALLEN, as published in the Canvas magazine of the Weekend Herald, here. You can read an interview with Sanders by Mark Broatch of the Sunday Star-Times here.


Have you read THE FALLEN? Are you intending to? What are your thoughts on the increasing publicity and prominence (relatively speaking) of Kiwi crime fiction lately? Long overdue? A cause for optimism? A false dawn? Thoughts and comments welcome.