Vanda Symon's BOUND a book to read in 2011, says Sunday Star-Times

In this week's issue of the Sunday Star-Times, one of New Zealand's biggest and most influential newspapers, Books Editor Mark Broatch (who wrote an excellent feature on the rise of New Zealand crime fiction last year) looked ahead to some of the books he thinks will be well worth reading in the coming year.

Along with a list of bestselling international crime fiction authors that Broatch notes will have new books available in 2010, he also singles out modern day Kiwi crime queen Vanda Symon's upcoming fourth Sam Shephard tale, BOUND. You can read the Sunday Star-Times article here.

BOUND is also one of my 'most anticipated' crime fiction releases of 2011. Sam Shephard has become one of my favourite protagonists over the first three books of the series, and I think Vanda Symon has a great writing style. You can read my review of THE RINGMASTER here, listen to Graham Beattie's review of CONTAINMENT here, and read my review of the first Sam Shephard tale, OVERKILL, here.

I'll be trying to get my hands on a copy of BOUND as soon as I can this year, that's for sure.

Here's the publisher's blurb: "A brutal home invasion shocks the nation. A man is murdered, his wife bound, gagged and left to watch.

But when Detective Sam Shephard scratches the surface, the victim, a successful businessman, is not all he seems to be. And when the evidence points to two of Dunedin's most hated criminals, the case seems cut and dried... until the body count starts to rise.

Meanwhile, Sam is in big trouble again…"

You can read an extract of BOUND here, or by clicking on the book cover above. The book is due for release in New Zealand and Australia on 31 January.

Have you read any of Vanda Symon's crime novels? Are you looking forward to BOUND? What do you think of Sam Shephard as a character? Of Dunedin as a crime fiction setting? Thoughts and comments appreciated.

It's a crime wave: must-read article on Kiwi crime fiction in today's Sunday Star-Times

Take a peek at the book pages in today's Sunday Star-Times (one of New Zealand's very biggest newspapers, and the only weekend newspaper with truly national distribution), and you will find an excellent large feature article written by Books Editor Mark Broatch on the recent rise of quality Kiwi crime fiction, a "small torrent" that needs to be embraced much more by Kiwi readers as he says.

It's fantastic to see locally-written crime fiction getting this kind of coverage in such a major newspaper. Broatch has talked to a number of people in the books industry about Kiwi crime fiction, and in a much more eloquent and stats-supported way, highlights several of the points we've discussed on this blog over the past year, while also providing some great insights from key people in the local books industry, such as Stephen Stratford, head of judges in the NZ Post Book Awards (who apparently is a long-time crime fan), Booksellers NZ chair Hamish Wright, Penguin NZ publishing director Geoff Walker, and Random House Fiction Editor Harriet Allan.

Broatch also got a few comments from a lesser-light, myself. It was a bit weird being on the other side of the interviewer-interviewee pairing, and waiting to see whether you'd come across as a bumbling idiot in the eventual article - which you can read HERE.

Interestingly, the article said 369,000 crime and thriller titles have been sold in this country in 2010 (from a population of a little over 4 million), but only 0.8% of those sales are books classified as locally-written crime. There are probably a few other titles not classified as crime for the statistics that should be, as Broatch points out, but regardless, those stats are dreadful.

I've read previously that generally about 5% of book sales in NZ are local books - which is too low anyway, but just goes to show that we're even worse at supporting locally-written crime than we are at supporting other types of locally-written books.

And that's the point I've been yammering on about for a while - Kiwi readers do love crime fiction (check out the international bestsellers lists), but we've been a little hopeless at supporting our own writers, no matter how good they are (see the Kiwi bestsellers lists).

That has got to change, and hopefully with an increasing amount of quality writers, good coverage from the likes of the Sunday Star-Times, and the establishment of things like the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, the wider reader awareness of our great local writers will improve. It's happened with New Zealand music (which exploded in popularity and support 'across the genres' in recent years), and it can happen with books too.

Thoughts and comments welcome.

Good feature on debutant Kiwi crime writer Ben Sanders (THE FALLEN) in today's Sunday Star-Times

It's been quite a weekend for young Ben Sanders of the North Shore, as he and his debut crime novel THE FALLEN have been featured in both of arguably the two biggest and most influential weekend newspapers in New Zealand; the Weekend Herald and the Sunday Star-Times.

Following on from my review in the Weekend Herald, today's Sunday Star-Times has a good interview-based feature on Sanders in its books section, written by Books Editor Mark Broatch. You can read the feature here.

I was in Borders Queen Street a couple of hours ago, and they had quite a nice stack of THE FALLEN on one of the display tables (they're currently running a big fiction special, so it was only $22.95 too, which is a great price), so hopefully people will give the new kid on the block a try.

Unfortunately neither Whitcoulls Queen Street or Whitcoulls Downtown had any stock on display yet, but hopefully they will rectify that in the next day or so.