The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves - Review

My mum said to me last year that she had never read any of Ann Cleeves' books and I thought she would like the Vera series so for Christmas I bought her the first eight books I think, in a lovely set in a cardboard holder. I think it was around £25 off eBay, brand new, which makes it excellent value per book. She read the first book and lent it to me. I've read a few of the Vera books but out of order, so it was weird to go back to the beginning. Especially as the book was printed in 1999 so it's weird how much technology there wasn't around. 

My mum's criticism is that Vera didn't appear until way late on in the book, which she didn't like. She has also never seen the TV show so in one way that helped, because she had no pre conceived notions about Vera here, whereas I definitely always see her as Brenda Blethyn! I'm sad the TV show has finished actually because I've watched it religiously, but I did enjoy the documentary about it and would recommend it for fans. 

Anyway, this book. Three women are arriving at Baikie's Cottage to carry out an environmental study on the area. This is because a local company wants to build a quarry nearby (do you build a quarry??) and these three geologists need to make sure that there's nothing special that would be destroyed. Baikie's Cottage is near to Black Law Farm, where Bella and Douglas live. Douglas has had a stroke and needs a lot of care; Bella is his second wife and dedicated to him. However, at the beginning of the book, when one of the women, Rachael, arrives, she finds Bella dead in the barn.

She and Bella have been close and she is shocked by the apparent suicide. She doesn't believe it, but everyone else seems to. Rachael is reeling from the betrayal of her boss and ex lover, Peter, so she wants to lie low for a bit. She has an eccentric mother, Edie, and she wants to know about her dad, who Edie refuses to tell her about. 

The second woman, Anne, is local to the area but choosing to sleep at the cottage. She is pretty unhappily married to a man called Jeremy, but is also having an affair with a man who has something to do with the new quarry. I don't know, I lost the plot entirely because there were far too many characters and it was hard to keep them straight in my head. I liked her best of the three women I think. 

The third woman is Grace. She's a lot younger than the others and somewhat of a loner. She shares the same surname as the local toffs of the manor up at the big house, but it's not clear at first how she's related, if she is at all. I found her story just quite sad to be honest. 

As I said, there's a ton of characters and then there's another dead body, and it's just very confusing and unclear about who is who and what they've got to do with anything. For that reason I can only give it three out of five. I did like meeting Vera so I will definitely read the rest when my mum passes them on, but I just found this overly long and confusing. There were bits of plot that just went nowhere, and too many coincidences for my liking. I think Ann has got better at these books along the way!