The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves
My fourth book for 
ljbookbingo is The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves for the Animal on the Cover square found here. There are a few vague spoilers in my review but nothing to egregious.
Three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey on the Northumberland countryside. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal....For team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide...
When Rachael arrives at the cottage, however, she is horrified to discover the body of her friend Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide--a verdict Rachael finds impossible to accept.
Only when the next death occurs does a fourth woman enter the picture--the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women's tangled lives in The Crow Trap.
Ann Cleeves's popular Vera Stanhope books have been made into the hit series “Vera” starring Brenda Blethyn and are available in the U.S. -Amazon Book Description.
I greatly enjoyed this book. It was a bit unusual in the detective genre as you don’t get to meet Vera Stanhope the head detective until after 1/3 of the way through the book. You also don’t get her pov until 3/4 of the way through. So you mainly are seeing the events unfold through the eyes of the 3 main protagonists. I found it an interesting experience and I liked getting to read how they viewed each other and the events surrounding them.
The actual mystery was good. I had narrowed down my list of suspects but hadn’t guessed who it was so it was nice to see how Detective Stanhope solved it. I really loved Vera who is a bit of an uncouth curmudgeon and really makes no apologies for it. And why should she? Male detectives get to be dysfunctional all the time, I liked how messy she was both physically and emotionally but how she still got the job done. She felt real.
My only complaint is the ending felt a little rushed. I wanted to know a bit more about how everyone got on after everything went down. Overall I enjoyed myself and I am actually really looking forward to reading the next in the series. This entry was originally posted at https://under-the-silk-tree.dreamwidth.org/38041.html
ljbookbingo is The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves for the Animal on the Cover square found here. There are a few vague spoilers in my review but nothing to egregious.
Three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey on the Northumberland countryside. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal....For team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide...
When Rachael arrives at the cottage, however, she is horrified to discover the body of her friend Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide--a verdict Rachael finds impossible to accept.
Only when the next death occurs does a fourth woman enter the picture--the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women's tangled lives in The Crow Trap.
Ann Cleeves's popular Vera Stanhope books have been made into the hit series “Vera” starring Brenda Blethyn and are available in the U.S. -Amazon Book Description.
I greatly enjoyed this book. It was a bit unusual in the detective genre as you don’t get to meet Vera Stanhope the head detective until after 1/3 of the way through the book. You also don’t get her pov until 3/4 of the way through. So you mainly are seeing the events unfold through the eyes of the 3 main protagonists. I found it an interesting experience and I liked getting to read how they viewed each other and the events surrounding them.
The actual mystery was good. I had narrowed down my list of suspects but hadn’t guessed who it was so it was nice to see how Detective Stanhope solved it. I really loved Vera who is a bit of an uncouth curmudgeon and really makes no apologies for it. And why should she? Male detectives get to be dysfunctional all the time, I liked how messy she was both physically and emotionally but how she still got the job done. She felt real.
My only complaint is the ending felt a little rushed. I wanted to know a bit more about how everyone got on after everything went down. Overall I enjoyed myself and I am actually really looking forward to reading the next in the series. This entry was originally posted at https://under-the-silk-tree.dreamwidth.org/38041.html