Who Will Win the Marsh?

It’s official now: Craig Sisterson, the man behind New Zealand’s coveted annual Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, has announced the longlisted nominees for this year’s prize. They are:

• The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton (Little, Brown)
• Joe Victim, by Paul Cleave (Simon & Schuster)
• The Beckoning Ice, by Joan Druett (Old Salt Press)
• Frederick’s Coat, by Alan Duff (Vintage)
• My Brother’s Keeper, by Donna Malane (HarperCollins)
• Where Dead Men Go, by Liam McIlvanney (Faber and Faber)
• Cross Fingers, by Paddy Richardson (Hachette)
• Only the Dead, by Ben Sanders (HarperCollins)

“That’s one heck of a line-up,” Sisterson writes in his blog, Crime Watch. “How you cut it down to finalists, let alone a winner, I do not know. I can certainly see how readers will have massively divergent opinions on their favourites amongst this wide-ranging list. I don’t even know myself which book I’d choose to win.”

I have to figure out my own preferences; as was the case last year, I am once again among the “international panel of crime fiction aficionados” judging this new Marsh competition. Over the last few weeks, copies of this year’s eight contenders have sailed through my mail slot, one by one. I have been making way through them all, but still have plenty of reading to do.

A tally of finalists should be available by some time in early August. The winner is set to be declared on Saturday, August 30, “following the Great New Zealand Crime Debate event at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival 2014.”