Joffe snares 94-year-old Renée's debut crime series

Joffe Books has scooped two books in 94-year-old Māori author Renée Taylor’s "darkly witty" crime series.

Editorial director Emma Grundy Haigh acquired world English language rights, excluding New Zealand, from Nadine Rubin Nathan at High Spot Literary for The Wild Card and Blood Matters. They will publish in e-book and paperback in autumn 2022. 

The Wild Card tells the story of Ruby who has spent 20 years trying to shake her suspicions that her childhood best friend was murdered. "But now the time has come to find out the truth," the synopsis reads. "Ruby’s only lead is a notebook that uses the symbols on playing cards as a code. But what do they mean? As soon as Ruby starts to investigate, strange things start to happen. A man in a balaclava attacks her, someone tears up her apartment, there’s a series of break-ins at the local theatre where she’s playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. The deeper Ruby goes into the mystery of Betty’s death, the more questions emerge about herself — questions she’d never dared to ask before. If Ruby’s going to uncover the truth, she’ll need to find the wild card — fast."

Taylor, known mononymously as Renée, has written memoirs, poetry and plays in her native New Zealand. Describing herself as "a lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals", she places the experiences of women and the concerns of working-class and Māori people at the centre of all her work. 

She published The Wild Card with Cuba Press in New Zealand as her first foray into crime fiction at the age of 90, and received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in the same year.

“It’s fabulous to know the rights for The Wild Card and Blood Matters to publish in English around the world have been bought by the amazing Joffe Books," she said. "Thank you Mary McCallum and Sarah Bolland (The Cuba Press) and Nadine Rubin Nathan of High Spot Literary for making it happen. I’m totally chuffed.”

MacCallum, co-director of the press said: “Joffe champions crime authors from diverse communities, and Renée is a Māori takatāpui (LGBTQIA+ writer), who has always written with women, Māori and takatāpui characters centre stage. It’s exciting to see her work taken out of New Zealand and into the rest of the world.

"Renée is one of New Zealand’s most esteemed writers and has come late to crime fiction, writing her first crime novel in her 90s, after four decades writing plays, other fiction and poetry. It was worth the wait — The Wild Card was shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Awards, and Blood Matters, to be released later this year in New Zealand, goes back to the same fictional town with another crime to solve.” 

Grundy Haigh said: “I’m utterly delighted to be publishing The Wild Card by Renée. I think I fell in love as much with the novel as I did with the author: one of New Zealand’s literary legends, Renée’s boundless energy, compassion and sheer sagacity are infectious. And her first foray into crime fiction is a brilliantly twisty, darkly witty and completely addictive page-turner that I simply couldn’t put down. I can’t wait to introduce her to a world of new readers!”