The Crow Trap Quotes

“Vera had a stab of recognition which made her stop in her tracks. For a moment, the woman, overweight, aggressive, seen reflected in the shop window, looked very much like her.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“You can leave mine in the pot a little longer, pet. I like to taste what I'm drinking.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“The ferret will always get the rat,’ Nancy said cryptically. ‘If it's got an empty belly.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Kemp Methodology.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Could you do that? Just turn your back on it?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what's the point in asking the question?”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Throughout her childhood this house had been full of talk. She'd thought it was like a soup of words, drowning her. Perhaps that was why she liked numbers best, counting things. Numbers were precise, unambiguous. ‘What then?’ ‘I need to know why she”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“God,’ he said. ‘Save me from forceful women.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“She stipulated that the trust should not benefit anyone under eighteen.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“He was a very big man and from this angle he looked deformed like one of the illustrations in Jack and the Beanstalk, her latest reading book. Perhaps, as he had just said, he was an ogre.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Afterwards, waiting outside for Rachael, Anne saw the woman again. She evaded the other mourners, slipped past them with remarkably little effort although she had appeared so big and clumsy in the chapel.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“They had propped her up on the sofa with pillows but by then she was so large that her flesh spread, jelly-like, over the edge of it and she looked in danger of overbalancing and falling off.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“She had changed from her school uniform into pink shorts and a pink T-shirt. She was large for her age and the outfit didn't flatter her.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“It was Vera Stanhope, standing in the doorway in the shadow. She must have let herself in through the kitchen. For a large woman she moved very quietly.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“So prepared, Anne and Rachael turned to watch her come in. She was a large woman – big bones amply covered, a bulbous nose, man-sized feet. Her legs were bare and she wore leather sandals.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Connie had slept here before she had become too frail and fat to climb the stairs, in a large double bed with a brocade cover.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Was he ill?’ ‘He was fat and idle,’ Miss Davison retorted. ‘I suppose that's one form of illness.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“In one corner a rusty caravan was propped up on a pile of bricks. The caravan door was opened by a fat old lady.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Perhaps that's why Grace was never hungry. She pigged out on chocolate.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“She had been a naturalist and illustrator, a spinster. Once she had walked the hills in search of inspiration but obesity soon restricted her ramblings.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Vera had a stab of recognition which made her stop in her tracks. For a moment the woman, overweight, aggressive, seen reflected in the shop window, looked very much like her.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Since the funeral there had been an undercurrent of tension, a tetchiness”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“I'm fit as a lop.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Ashworth drove carefully up the track and through the ford towards the forest.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“There was candlelight for which she was grateful. Recently she had noticed fine lines above her upper lip and knew that she could no longer get away with sleeveless dresses.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“She loved the way Peter disappeared from Baikie's with talk of a meeting at Trust Headquarters, only to return at dusk with flowers and champagne. She loved dancing with him on the lawn to the music from Constance's old wind-up gramophone. No one had ever made such a fuss of her before.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“The vicar had already started speaking when the door banged open again. Rachael was reminded of an old, bad British movie, though whether it was a thriller or a comedy she couldn't quite say. The vicar paused in mid-sentence and they all turned to stare. Even Dougie tried to move his head in that direction. It was a woman in her fifties. The first impression was of a bag lady, who'd wandered in from the street. She had a large leather satchel slung across her shoulder and a supermarket carrier bag in one hand. Her face was grey and blotched. She wore a knee-length skirt and a long cardigan weighed down at the front by the pockets. Her legs were bare. Yet she carried off the situation with such confidence and aplomb that they all believed that she had a right to be there. She took a seat, bowed her head as if in private prayer, then looked directly at the vicar as if giving him permission to continue. Neville had booked a room in the White Hart Hotel and afterwards invited them all back to lunch.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“occurred to her suddenly that Rachael looked very like an otter herself, with her chunky front teeth, the brown hair which would turn grey when she was still young,”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“When she married Jeremy she had assumed there was money in the background. It hadn't quite worked out that way.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap

“Caminando hacia ellos sonreía con la alegre despreocupación que lo distinguía, y que Rachel percibió como la clase de confianza que da una educación cara”
― Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap