Paul Cleave wins the Ngaio Marsh Award
Paul Cleave became the Crown Prince of antipodean crime writing when his thriller Five Minutes Alone was awarded the 2015 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel on 4 October.
Paul Cleave, an internationally bestselling author, made history when his “gritty and thoroughly absorbing” novel that “evokes complex feelings about retribution and morality” was revealed as the winner before a packed hometown crowd at The Court Theatre.
The judging panel, consisting of crime fiction experts – authors, critics, and editors – from Scandinavia, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, said Five Minutes Alone was packed with “moral dilemmas, and great writing, pacing, and characters,” and demanded to be read in one sitting. “The characters are sympathetic and human, never becoming black and white or easily classified as good or bad,” noted one judge. “Cleave’s prose crackles like a campfire, darkly hypnotic and dangerous.”
Cleave had previously won the Ngaio Marsh Award in 2011 for Blood Men. The Award is made annually for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident. Cleave also received a set of Dame Ngaio’s novels courtesy of her publisher HarperCollins, a $1000 prize provided by WORD Christchurch, and an invitation to appear at a European crime writing festival.
Paul Cleave wins the Ngaio Marsh Award
Paul Cleave became the Crown Prince of antipodean crime writing when his thriller Five Minutes Alone was awarded the 2015 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel on 4 October.
Paul Cleave, an internationally bestselling author, made history when his “gritty and thoroughly absorbing” novel that “evokes complex feelings about retribution and morality” was revealed as the winner before a packed hometown crowd at The Court Theatre.
The judging panel, consisting of crime fiction experts – authors, critics, and editors – from Scandinavia, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, said Five Minutes Alone was packed with “moral dilemmas, and great writing, pacing, and characters,” and demanded to be read in one sitting. “The characters are sympathetic and human, never becoming black and white or easily classified as good or bad,” noted one judge. “Cleave’s prose crackles like a campfire, darkly hypnotic and dangerous.”
Cleave had previously won the Ngaio Marsh Award in 2011 for Blood Men. The Award is made annually for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident. Cleave also received a set of Dame Ngaio’s novels courtesy of her publisher HarperCollins, a $1000 prize provided by WORD Christchurch, and an invitation to appear at a European crime writing festival.
