Welcome back to my Decades Library. It’s a new year but I am asking my guests to take on the same challenge. Each week someone from the world of books will join me to help me in my quest to assemble the Ultimate Libary. I call it my Decades Library for reasons which shall shortly become clear.

For anyone joining us for the first time – Welcome! Let me explain what the Decades Library is all about. I began this challenge with the simple question: If I was to build a new library (starting with zero books) which books should I add to my library shelves to make sure I had the very best collection of titles available for people to read?

I knew I could not take on this challenge alone so each week I invite a new guest to join me and I ask them to add some of their favourite books to my Decades Library.  They have to follow two rules. Got to have rules or chaos ensues.

Rule 1 – Pick Any Five Books.
Rule 2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

I have finally wrestled the Curators Hat back from my last guest, Lisa Gray (thanks for looking after it over the holidays Lisa) and I am delighted to introduce D.V. Bishop who will make the first five selections of 2022.

D.V. Bishop writes the Cesare Aldo historical crime novels set in Renaissance Florence. The first in the series, City of Vengeance, was shortlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, won the Pitch Perfect contest at the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing festival, and earned Bishop a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. It was published in paperback on January 6^th, 2022. The second Cesare Aldo novel, The Darkest Sin, comes out March 2022 in hardback, ebook and audiobook – pre-order links here: http://linktr.ee/TheDarkestSin

D.V. Bishop is the pen-name of David Bishop, an award-winning screenwriter and TV dramatist. He has authored audio dramas and tie-in novels for Doctor Who and Judge Dredd. A former editor of iconic British science fiction weekly 2000AD, Bishop has written nearly fifty issues of beloved comics character The Phantom. Bishop co-created the original graphic novel Dani’s Toys with artist Ruairi Coleman which will be launched via a Kickstarter campaign in 2022.

In his copious spare time Bishop leads the MA Creative Writing and the MA Writing Popular Fiction programmes at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. A glutton for punishment, he is developing a new global online MA Creative Writing programme focusing on popular genre fiction for 2022.

DECADES

I live in Scotland, but my heart belongs to where I was born and raised: Aotearoa (New Zealand). My contributions to the Ultimate Library all come from NZ, books that deserve to be better known.

1960s: The Scarecrow by Ronald Hugh Morrieson (1963)

‘The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut.’ That sentence opens The Scarecrow, an early Kiwi Gothic and the first novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson. He struggled to get published in his lifetime yet all four of his novels were adapted into films. The Scarecrow is funny, creepy, insightful, thrilling, and picaresque in equal measure. It is available on Kindle in the UK.

1970s: Smith’s Dream by C. K. Stead (1971)

Smith’s Dream is a taut, speculative thriller set in a New Zealand where political apathy lets a repressive government take charge. The title character went off the grid after his marriage ended; when he re-emerges, Smith struggles to recognise what his country has become. Hard to find in print, but the 1977 film version Sleeping Dogs with a young Sam Hunt is on UK DVD & Blu-Ray.

1980s: Photo Finish by Ngaio Marsh (1980)

I could hardly make this list without including one of the Golden Age queens of mystery fiction, Ngaio Marsh, after whom NZ’s crime fiction awards are named. Photo Finish is set in a millionaire’s island mansion and features a Maria Callas-esque opera diva being stabbed through the heart with a photo of herself impaled on the dagger. Unsurprisingly, most of Marsh’s work remains in print.

1990s: Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff (1990)

This is a blistering novel about domestic violence and toxic masculinity. Once Were Warriors held a mirror up to aspects of life in New Zealand that few people discussed, forcing readers to face the brutal reality of racism and sexism in the country. There’s an acclaimed film version that won prizes world-wide, but Duff’s debut novel deserves to be read for its unflinching prose and power.

2000s: Overkill by Vanda Symon (2007)

The prologue of this debut is compelling and terrifying in equal measure, setting the stage for a brilliant first novel by Vanda Symon. UK readers discovered how gripping Overkill was when Orenda Books unleashed a new edition in 2018, and it was rightly shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger. But Overkill was first published 2007 in NZ, so it sneaks into my stretch of five decades.

My thanks to David for these marvellous selections. When I invite anyone to take part in the Decades Challenge I always mention that the selections are all very personal choices so to see five New Zealand titles gracing the Library shelves just warms my heart. I have even reviewed one of them for this blog!

David kindly provided a pre-order link for his forthcoming Cesare Aldo thriller The Darkest Sin but the first book in the series, City of Vengeance, released this week in paperback and you can grab a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/city-of-vengeance/d-v-bishop/9781529038798

DECADES WILL RETURN