Ngaio Marsh Awards

The Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel is a literary award presented annually in New Zealand to recognise excellence in crime fiction, mystery, and thriller writing. The Award was established in 2010, and is named after Dame Ngaio Marsh, one of the four Queens for Crime of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. The Award is presented each year in Christchurch, the hometown of Dame Ngaio.

The inaugural award was intended to be presented at the biennial Christchurch Writers Festival in September 2010, but had to be postponed due to a severe earthquake that struck the city that month, leading to the cancellation of the festival. The first Ngaio Marsh Award was presented in December 2010, and won by the pseudonymous author Alix Bosco for the thriller Cut & Run. Bosco did not attend the presentation ceremony, but would reveal 'herself' as New Zealand writer and playwright Greg McGee in the lead-up to the 2011 Award.

Winners

2010

• Cut & Run by Alix Bosco
  • Containment by Vanda Symon
  • Burial by Neil Cross

2011

• Blood Men by Paul Cleave
  • Hunting Blind by Paddy Richardson
  • Captured by Neil Cross
  • Slaughter Falls by Alix Bosco

2012

• Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross
  • Collecting Cooper by Paul Cleave
  • By Any Means by Ben Sanders
  • Bound by Vanda Symon

2013

• Death on Demand by Paul Thomas
  • The Laughterhouse by Paul Cleave
  • Little Sister by Julian Novitz
  • The Faceless by Vanda Symon