Maxine’s reply to my last post says it all – except for the fact that on her blog http://petronatwo.wordpress.com/ she writes about crime novels by women that I have never even heard of! Having just looked at her most recent posts, I can’t think why I was never sent Carolyn Parkhurst’s The Nobodies Album, or books by Inger Frimansson , Karin Altvegen or Diane Janes, to mention just a few of the women authors reviewed by Petrona. The fact that publishers don’t send these books – or even press releases about them - to reviewers like me, or to journals like The Literary Review, does explain the disproportion on my shelves and in my articles.
thank you for the kind mention! I get most of my reading ideas from Euro Crime website/database, a labour of love by librarian Karen Meek. As well as a website of reviews and authors, she lists all upcoming novels here: http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/future_releases.html so one can keep an eye out for any upcoming books by women that look promising (in combination with checking out websites to see what the books are about, etc). One can ask publishers to send review copies, though I appreciate it is all a bit inundating!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Karen is also one of the judges of the CWA international dagger and so she keeps a running list of all the translated crime fiction due out in the UK in a given year in an updated blog post: http://eurocrime.blogspot.com/2011/07/international-dagger-speculation-2012.html . Again, this is a great source of new upcoming books and one can cherry-pick any women authors that look good.