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The Ngaio Marsh Awards, in association with Rotorua Library Te Aka Mauri, invites booklovers to a thrilling evening of criminally good conversation with five talented North Island storytellers. Crime writing has come a long way since Dame Ngaio Marsh set one of her popular Inspector Alleyn tales among the bubbling mud and hot pools of our country in 1943, shifting from puzzling entertainments to modern tales delving deeply into people, places, and psychology.
Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel winner Claire Baylis will chair fellow Rotorua author Zoë Rankin, Cambridge author and past Ngaios finalist Nikki Crutchley, and #1 NZ bestselling crime writing duo Gareth & Louise Ward, aka 'the Bookshop Detectives'.
WHEN: Wednesday 6 May 2026
WHERE: Rotorua Library, 1127 Haupapa Street, Rotorua
WHEN: 5.30pm doors open for a 6pm panel discussion
Entry by koha.
RSVP to: https://events.humanitix.com/murder-in-the-library-2026
Refreshments provided
Claire is a Rotorua author and legal researcher who won the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel for DICE, a courtroom drama written as part of her PhD in creative writing from the Institute of Modern Letters. Claire studied then lectured in law for 12 years before moving to Rotorua, where she's been a researcher for the Trans-Tasman Jury Study and set up a water safety programme focused on low-decile schools.
Nikki is a Cambridge novelist, flash fiction writer and former librarian who was a finalist for the Ngaio Marsh Awards for her debut mystery NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE, set in a small Coromandel town. Nikki has written five novels, twice been regional winner of National Flash Fiction Day, and had her short stories published in various journals, magazines, and Australasian crime and thriller anthology DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER
Zoë is a Rotorua writer, adventurer, and former teacher who grew up in a small village in Scotland and immigrated to Aotearoa more than a decade ago. She studied international relations and Arabic at the University of St Andrews, and later won the Rotorua Noir Short Story competition in 2019. Her novel THE VANISHING PLACE was published by Moa Press in August 2025.
Gareth & Louise are the real-life owners of independent bookshop Wardini Books, with stores in Havelock North and Napier. They met at police training college in the UK and are both ex-coppers. THE BOOKSHOP DETECTIVES: DEAD GIRL GONE was Gareth and Louise’s first book together, and became the biggest-selling New Zealand fiction title of 2024. A sequel, TEA AND CAKE AND DEATH, was released in 2025, and a third instalment in their cosy mystery series, MURDER AND MOJITOS, is out in July 2026.
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Event Venue
Rotorua Library, 1129 Haupapa St, Rotorua 3010, New Zealand, Rotorua
Tickets
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