Fifteen years, fifteen stories: 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel longlist revealed

A Māori sleuth trying to leave policing behind, a New York bartender with an entourage of dead girls, a colonial Wellington tale entwined with infamous Edinburgh body-snatchers, a gay investigator in Renaissance Florence, a probation officer whose beloved husband is sucked into the pit of internet disinformation, and a couple of bookselling former British coppers are among the diverse array of characters and stories named today on the longlist for the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel.

• RETURN TO BLOOD by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
• THE HITCHHIKER by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins)
• A DIVINE FURY by DV Bishop (Macmillan)
• LEAVE THE GIRLS BEHIND by Jacqueline Bublitz (Allen & Unwin)
• WOMAN, MISSING by Sherryl Clark (HQ Fiction)
• HELL’S BELLS by Jill Johnson (Black & White)
• THE MIRES by Tina Makereti (Ultimo Press)
• A FLY UNDER THE RADAR by William McCartney
• HOME TRUTHS by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)
• 17 YEARS LATER by JP Pomare (Hachette)
• OKIWI BROWN by Cristina Sanders (The Cuba Press)
• A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND by Tina Shaw (Text Publishing)
• THE CALL by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• PREY by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)
• THE BOOKSHOP DETECTIVES: DEAD GIRL GONE by Gareth & Louise Ward (Penguin)