Daria Desombre

A brilliant law student (still very much perturbed by her father's mysterious murder and slightly obsessed with serial killers )manages to find herself an internship at Moscow's police headquarters .As bodies (both of unsolved murders in the past as in the present )turn up in different parts of Moscow, Masha discovers a strange pattern relating to medieval texts,maps, New Rome and Heavenly Jerusalem. The storyline is good, the characters are believable and it is a new twist on "the serial killer ".There is however one comment I would like to make, as Moscow plays such a prominent role in this story,a map of the city would have been helpful,handy...As it is,all the characters revolve around maps with different gates, walls and parks...but the reader(not a resident of Moscow) feels a bit lost. … (més)

Dear Ms Desombre:

Please consider using a different translator for your next book.

I enjoyed the story in "The Sin Collector", but Ms Fairweather-Vega's translation has stripped all the Russianness out of it. Most of the patronymics have been removed, so it jars when one pops up. Blini at breakfast are now just pancakes, and beautiful Russian onion domes have become cupolas, which architecturally they are not, they are copulas. Maria Fyodorovna Karavaya becomes plain Masha Karavay. Bizarrely, Detective Captain Andrey Yakolov has a "crocodile" smile, even though "krokodile" is a horrible horrible Russian drug.

Part of the reason for reading international fiction is to get a feel for a place and a culture. The Moscow presented here could be anywhere and Masha Karavay could be any law student.

I received a review copy of "The Sin Collector: Masha Karavai [sic] Detective Series" by Daria Desombre, translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega (AmazonCrossing) through NetGalley.com. There has been some mistake made in the title on Amazon with the "Karavay" in the text becoming and "Karavai" in the online title.… (més)