2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards Winners Revealed

Our heartfelt congratulations go out to the recently announced winners of the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards. Now in its fifteenth instalment, the annual Ngaio Marsh awards celebrate excellence in Aotearoa crime, mystery and thriller novels.

This year’s winners were:

• Rotorua author Claire Baylis, who won Best First Novel for her harrowing examination of jury beliefs and biases in Dice.

• D.V. Bishop scooped Best Novel for his Renaissance Florence-set mystery, Ritual of Fire.

• And Wellington-based writer Jennifer Lane won the Best Kids / YA novel for her smalltown mystery, Miracle.

The Ngaio Marsh Awards originated in 2010 for excellence in New Zealand crime, mystery and thriller writing. In 2016 the award for best First Novel was added and in 2017 another category was also added for the Best Non-Fiction. And this year saw the introduction of a new Kids / Young Adult category.

We recently had the great pleasure of seeing Jennifer Lane in full flow, leading an evening panel of criminally good conversation at our recent Ngaio Marsh Villainous Newtown: Live event.

The panel also featured:

• Debut author and actor Nick Davies talking about his acclaimed debut sunset noir novel, El Flamingo.
• Kim Hunt, author of The Quarry, and also previous Ngaio Marsh Awards finalist.
• And Charity Norman, 2023 winner of the Ngaio Marsh Awards' Best Novel award for Remember Me.

You can watch our video of the evening below, and also borrow all the winning books.

• Dice by Baylis, Claire
• Ritual of Fire by Bishop, D. V.
• Miracle by Lane, Jennifer
• El Flamingo by Davies, Nick
• The Quarry by Hunt, Kim
• Remember Me by Norman, Charity