Ihaka’s return scoops
the 2013 Ngaio Marsh Award
Fifteen years after he
disappeared from the page, maverick policeman Tito Ihaka’s critically acclaimed
return from exile in Death on Demand has
now won Paul Thomas the prestigious Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel for
2013.
“Ihaka is a tremendous
character in New Zealand fiction, an anarchic knight errant of a copper who
gives readers a feeling of a time bomb waiting to detonate,” said Judging
Convenor Craig Sisterson. “It was terrific to see Thomas bring him back in Death on Demand, particularly as that
duo forever changed the landscape of New Zealand crime writing in the
mid-1990s, tearing our genre from its cosy confines into mayhem-filled
modernity.”
In Death on Demand, Ihaka’s career has been
marooned in the Wairarapa, following a falling out with his Auckland bosses.
But a twist in the unsolved case that kick-started his troubles finds him back
in the saddle, dancing around police politics and old grudges in the big smoke while
on the trail of a shadowy hitman.
The judging panel,
consisting of crime fiction experts from New Zealand and overseas, called Death on Demand “clever, beautifully
written, and highly entertaining”. One international judge praised Thomas’s
“strong sense of place” in the “densely plotted and humorous tale”, while
another said she “learned a lot about New Zealand: class, race, and more...
this was a real classic mystery ... I can’t wait to read the rest of the
series”. Ihaka was described by the judges as “a unique character in the cop
world”, a man whose “determination to do things his way is appealing, and so is
his readiness to say exactly what he thinks, even when the result is crashing
rudeness”.
The Ngaio Marsh Award
for Best Crime Novel, established in 2010, is named for Dame Ngaio Marsh, who
is renowned worldwide as one of the four Queens of Crime of the Golden Age of
Detective Fiction. Dame Ngaio published 32 novels featuring Inspector Roderick
Alleyn between 1934 and her death in 1982. With sales in the millions, and her
books still in print to this day, Dame Ngaio is one of New Zealand’s most
successful authors in history. Dame Ngaio’s closest living relative, John
Dacres-Manning, gave his blessing for the New Zealand crime writing award to be
named in her honour, saying that “I know that Dame Ngaio would be so proud...
to know that her name is associated with the award”.
In addition to the
award itself, Thomas wins a set of Dame Ngaio’s novels, courtesy of
HarperCollins, and a cheque for $1,000 from the Christchurch Writers Festival
Trust.
For
more information on the Ngaio Marsh Award, please contact:
Craig Sisterson: craigsisterson@hotmail.com or
(021) 184 1206
1 comment:
Very pleased about this. Paul is our Ian Rankin - better in my opinion. Recommended reading for anyone interested in crime fiction.
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