Crime on stage

Peter Lovesey's next Peter Diamond novel, Stagestruck, is set in and around Bath's Theater Royal.

The stage seems a natural setting for a crime story, doesn't it, thriving as it does on disguise and deception. Lovesey, that most ingenious of crime writers, does something else as well. He has a supporting player on the police force whose only dialogue is clownishly baroque wordplay.

The verbal games remind the reader that the simplest statement can be twisted into any number of meanings — surely appropriate for a mystery story. And they drive Peter Diamond entertainingly batty.

Such over-the-top verbal business might be a distraction in an otherwise realistic police novel. Here, the character is like a commedia dell'arte clown, thrown into the mix to stir things up.

Now, here's a question you'll likely be able to answer more readily that I could: What other crime writers have set stories in the world of the theater? Why did they choose those settings? What do such settings add to the story?

I'll start you off: Dame Ngaio Marsh.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

And then there were three ...

The finalists for the first Ngaio Marsh Award, for best crime novel by a New Zealand citizen or resident published in New Zealand in 2009, are:

• Cut & Run by Alix Bosco (Penguin);

• Burial by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster); and

• Containment by Vanda Symon (Penguin)

Craig Sisterson, the driving force behind the awards and the man who kindly invited me to be one of the judges, sends along this note from Dame Ngaio's nephew:

I am delighted to hear of the progress of the Dame Ngaio Marsh Award, and congratulate the finalists for what sounds to be a very high standard of detective story writing. I know that Dame Ngaio would be so proud of all the entrants, and to know that her name is associated with the award. I hope you will extend my own congratulations to the writers, but also to those who have taken what will have been an enormous amount work, research and thought to create the awards very sincerely

John Dacres-Mannings

The winner will be announced Sept. 10 at The Press Christchurch Writers’ Festival, and congratulations are in order for all the nominees and to Craig for his hard work in putting the awards together. Perhaps this enterprising promoter of New Zealand crime writing will have an award or a convention named for him one day. Hey, they did it for Anthony Boucher.

***

Here's a bit about Dame Ngaio, a pioneer in theater and an author whose novels and stories featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn made her one of the pillars of crime fiction's Golden Age. Here's a personal reminiscence from author Roy Vaughan.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Haere mai to a New Zealand crime blog

Craig Sisterson sends word from New Zealand of Crime Watch, his new blog about New Zealand and international crime/thriller writing.

Early posts have lots of good stuff about New Zealand writers, appearances by and interviews with international authors, and one about New Zealand's own dame of crime fiction, Ngaio Marsh.

"So why a blog on Kiwi crime fiction?" Craig writes. "Well, because I think we have some fantastic authors here in Aotearoa, but we don't talk about them enough."

Craig also answered a question I had always had about his country: "What is kiwifruit called in New Zealand?" His answer: It's called kiwifruit.

(Click here for an explanation of this post's hospitable title.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009