The Crow Trap - Ann Cleeves

Up until recently, I knew Ann Cleeves only through the television series Shetland and Vera, having noticed that both shows credit Cleeves as originator of the main characters being featured in each. So when I started seeing all the buzz about Cleeves’s new Two Rivers series being generated by the latest addition to the for-the-moment two-book series (The Heron’s Cry), I decided to go back and read The Long Call, the first book in that series, for myself. I enjoyed that one enough to make me want to read something else from Cleeves as soon as I could. But preferring not to wait a year between series books if I don’t have to, I decided to start the nine-book Vera Stanhope series from the beginning instead of immediately catching up on the new Detective Matthew Venn series. 

The Crow Trap (1999) is outstanding for a number of reasons, not the least being that the series lead, Vera Stanhope, doesn’t really show up until page 229 of the 535 page edition I read. (It should be noted that Vera did make an anonymous cameo appearance some pages earlier, but that was only as a rather odd woman who enters a funeral service very late — and very loudly.) And it is only in Part Three of the novel, page 413, that the reader begins to see things from Vera’s point of view. This may be an unusual approach, but it allows Cleeves to describe what is happening through the eyes of three very different women forced to live in isolation together because of their work. By the time Vera begins her investigation, everything is set-up for readers to begin making their own assumptions, and Cleeves has liberally sprinkled hints and red herrings all over the place for them to deal with. 

Too, Vera is not quite what you would expect in the way of a detective worthy of starring in her own long-running series, especially one this popular. The first time she really comes center stage, Vera is described this way:

“She was a large woman — big bones amply covered, a bulbous nose, man-sized feet. Her legs were bare and she wore leather sandals. Her square toes were covered in mud. Her face was blotched and pitted so Rachel thought she must suffer some skin complaint or allergy. Over her clothes she wore a transparent plastic mac, and she stood there, the rain dripping from it onto the floor, grey hair sleeked dark to her forehead, like a middle-aged tripper caught in a sudden storm on Blackpool prom.”

But don’t make the mistake that her adversaries too often make. Vera may very much be her own woman, but she is brilliant. And those who underestimate her are making a bad mistake.

The Crow Trap is a complicated story of small town life in rural England, a place that is still very class conscious despite so many of its residents having a pretty good idea of where everyone’s skeletons are buried. In an even more remote cottage outside the village, three women are working on an environmental study that has to be completed before a local quarry will be allowed to expand its footprint and impact in the area. Some are for it and some hate to think about how different things will be for the locals if the quarry is allowed to expand. Things begin to get interesting after it appears that one property owner has killed herself, but it is only when a second body turns up later that Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth learn exactly how ugly everything about this case really is.

Bottom Line: The Crow Trap is an excellent introduction to the Vera Stanhope character even for readers who already have the television image of Vera firmly affixed in their minds. Honestly, since I’m one of those myself, I have to say that actress Brenda Blethyn is just about perfect for the television role, and already having her as my image of Vera was not at all distracting as I read The Crow Trap. Cleeves is best known for her Vera Stanhope and Shetland series right now, and it is easy to see why that is. She has set the bar really high for her new Two Rivers series. Now that she is alternating Vera Stanhope novels and Matthew Venn novels, there is a lot to look forward to — and that’s not even to mention her substantial back catalogue. 

Ann Cleeves