Petrona is a blog about books, reading (mainly intelligent crime fiction, often translated), publishing, science, the internet and a few other topics. Previously at Typepad
All my reviews are archived here – you can sort by geographical region, genre and other criteria.
Book review policy: Most of the books reviewed here are books I own, have been offered by publishers or friends, or occasionally borrowed from the library, as specified in each posted review. I review print and E-books (Kindle (UK) format). Publishers: please do not send any books unless I’ve expressed interest in reading them (you can contact me by email (maxinelclarke [at] gmail [dot] com) or via Twitter ( @Petrona_ ) / Friend Feed comment ). Authors: please do not ask me to review your book or send me copies.
I cannot guarantee to review any book I am sent, even if I’ve expressed interest in it. In particular, I prefer not to review books that I have not enjoyed reading.
The views expressed on this blog and the associated book review archive are my own and do not represent an employer or any other organisation.
This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Petrona 
I’m even more impressed with this new site than I was with your previous location which in itself was very good.
Thank you, Terry, what a lovely comment, which is very much appreciated.
Best wishes
Maxine.
What a nice looking blog. I suppose in addition to saying hello I should tell you I have a book coming out…but for now I’ll just say hello.
Hope you are well.
Joe
Interesting that one can write a post but people who comment sometimes don’t seem to read the post before commenting!
Hi, Maxine. Just noticed that you very kindly linked to my review of AMERICAN VISA by Juan de Recacoechea on the Petrona site. The link does not work, however. This is the correct link: http://marywhipplereviews.com/juan-de-recacoechea-american-visa-bolivia/
Thanks for linking to my site! I appreciate it, since I review international fiction almost exclusively, and the readership for books from Bolivia is small. 🙂 Best regards, Mary Whipple
Thanks for the comment and correct link, Mary. This is partially caused by the export of my blog from Typepad to WordPress (in which all the links were lost correct or no). I agree, translated Bolivian crime fiction is not exactly thick on the ground!
Hi Maxine,
You commented on CrimeFictionLover’s blog page that you might be interested in seeing a copy of Yin Yang Tattoo. I am the author, and I wonder if you managed to get hold of a copy. If not, I will be happy to arrange one to be sent to you.
Best wishes,
Ron McMillan
Ah, a book review site that doesn’t make our eyeballs bleed! (And well-written reviews, too!)
I’ve read a lot about the supposed high quality of Scandinavian crime fiction, but can’t study their languages. German is as close as I can come to them. Can I assume that their translations into German are available and closer to the original than translations into English?
Thanks for your help.
Norm
If you look on Amazon UK site you can see German editions of books, so that’s probably the best way to find out, Norm. Whether they are closer to the original I would not know, but certainly the quality of the translation and the editing would be factors, just as much as the degree of similarity of the languages. I note that several translators (eg Tiina Nunnally, Charlotte Barsund, Kari Dixon) seem to translate books from Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, but I have no knowledge about German in this context.