THE CROW TRAP by Anne Cleeves

 Vera on the tele - one of my all time favourite TV women, brought to life by another fave - Brenda Blethyn. Have I watched all the Veras? I most certainly have. Tough old bird with a heart of marshmallow, stomping around Northumberland in her enormous coat with bottomless pockets, gumboots and that hat. What a treasure. However I have never read a Vera novel, although I did know that Anne Cleeves writes a cracker whodunnit. Number 1 seems like a good place to start, and it was! I can't remember the TV series of this story, which is just as well, as the plot is not quite the same, characters from the book are missing, minor threads in the book are more important in the series. 

But it doesn't really matter, either way, the characters are still well drawn, very human, and intricate. Their relationships to each other are also realistic and complicated, as is the stunning and bleak landscape they live and work in. We'll just call it 'somewhere in Northumberland'. Vera herself does not make an appearance until halfway through this 500+ page tome. So the novel is really less about Vera, and more about the those who are murdered and who are the murderers. Of which there could be several. And most importantly setting the scene, continuously as it happens, for the why of the murders. Such intricate plotting, plenty of threads that could be important but you find out later aren't. I was constantly putting 'clues' into my memory bank, thinking aha, this is it here. But no... one of the many however did prove to be the key to unlocking the murders. And Vera's marvellous mind too. We get glimpses on screen of Vera's early life, what shaped her. Here, in Vera's first outing, the story takes place in the area she grew up in. She knows the landscape, the wildlife, the seasons, even the house where much of the action takes place  - as a small motherless child, she would visit it with her bird egg stealing father, in cahoots with the crazy Constance. Now all those memories, good and bad, are revived but also helpful to Vera in solving the murders. And as always, things are much much more complicated than would first appear. 

As this was my first meeting with Vera, I was curious to learn about her. I think Brenda Blethyn does a very kind Vera compared to the Anne Cleeves' version - very TV and screen friendly. Maybe she softens in later books. I found her frankly terrifying! Enough to make small children cry, and it would feel like a torture session being questioned by this Vera as to your whereabouts. I still love her, will now scrounge the shops for the other five Vera novels. Five... oooh, what a treat!