Ngaio Marsh Award: watch this space!

Just a heads-up that I will soon be revealing some further exciting news about the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, in terms of the prize that the winner, to be announced next Friday night at the 2010 The Press Christchurch Writers' Festival, will receive.

Things have been happening in the background, and there should be an official announcement very soon, hopefully tomorrow.

It's exciting times down here in New Zealand for crime and thriller writing. I understand that debutant Ben Sanders (THE FALLEN) may have held his spot at #1 on the New Zealand Adult Fiction bestseller list for the fourth week running, and that his novel may be heading for a reprint already, which is quite rare down here in New Zealand.

Paul Thomas's THE IHAKA TRILOGY (a collection of his three acclaimed crime novels from the late 1990s) has also remained in the top 5 bestsellers. So that's great, that Kiwi readers are giving some locally-written crime a go. Hopefully it bodes very well for our growing canon of good and great crime writers overall....

Also on the horizon, as well as the presentation of the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel (for books published in 2009), is the release of another Kiwi crime debutant - Donna Malane's NZSA Pindar Publishing Prize-winning novel, SURRENDER. I'm very much looking forward to reading that, soon.

So, things are very much on the up and up, crime writing wise. Long may it continue!

Thoughts and comments welcome.

Dream debut continues for #1 bestseller Ben Sanders

What a month it's been for young North Shore crime writer Ben Sanders.

Over the past few weeks he and his debut novel, THE FALLEN, have been featured by several of New Zealand's biggest media players (eg the Weekend Herald, the Sunday Star-Times, TVNZ), and mentioned in several others as well, and now for the third week in a row THE FALLEN sits atop the New Zealand Adult Fiction bestseller list!

You can watch a short 5mins long clip of Ben Sanders being interviewed by Paul Henry and Pippa Wetzell on Breakfast, the popular TVNZ morning show here. For those of you outside of Australia and New Zealand, I understand a Kindle edition of THE FALLEN is due to be released on Amazon.com in September.

Paul Thomas's IHAKA TRILOGY (Old School Tie, Inside Dope and Guerilla Season) also holds its place at #3 in its third week on the charts. With Alix Bosco's SLAUGHTER FALLS also out now, Donna Malane's SURRENDER coming out in September, and the publicity being generated about New Zealand crime fiction in the lead-up to the presentation of the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, at The Press Christchurch Writers' Festival, in just two weeks' time, hopefully Kiwi readers will continue to give our locally-written crime novels a go.

Have you read THE FALLEN? Are you intending to? Do you think it's a contender for the 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award? What other great Kiwi crime have you read this year? 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.

#1 with a bullet: debut crime writer Ben Sanders tops Kiwi bestseller list with THE FALLEN

The hits keep on coming for Kiwi crime fiction, with the most recent NZ Adult Fiction Bestseller list being topped by THE FALLEN by Ben Sanders, a 21-year old debutant Kiwi crime writer! THE FALLEN, which I recently reviewed for the Weekend Herald - see here, jumped straight to the top spot in its first week on the charts, which is fantastic.

That's the second #1 placing for Kiwi crime this year (after Paddy Richardson's HUNTING BLIND likewise topped the charts), and hopefully these sorts of placings and publicity will continue to open up Kiwi readers eyes to the quality of local crime, and start to overcome those horrible reader stats in Mark Broatch's excellent feature article in today's Sunday Star-Times.

Paul Thomas's IHAKA TRILOGY (Old School Tie, Inside Dope & Guerilla Season) also slots in at #8 in its first week on the charts. With Alix Bosco's SLAUGHTER FALLS also out now, and Donna Malane's SURRENDER coming out in September, hopefully Kiwi crime fiction can take a few positions on the charts in the coming weeks.

You can see the latest bestseller list here.