TRENT'S LAST CASE

Trent's Last Case is a detective novel written by E. C. Bentley and first published in 1913. Its central character, the artist and amateur detective Philip Trent, reappeared subsequently in the novel Trent's Own Case (1936), and the short-story collection Trent Intervenes (1938). Trent's Last Case is actually the first novel Philip Trent appears in, and is a whodunit with a place in detective fiction history because it is the first major send-up of that genre. Not only does Trent fall in love with one of the primary suspects – usually considered off-limits – he also, after painstakingly collecting all the evidence, draws all the wrong conclusions. G. K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown mysteries, felt that this novel was "The finest detective story of modern times". (Bentley and Chesterton were close personal friends, and Bentley dedicated the book to Chesterton.) The book was influential in the postwar "Golden Age" of detective Agatha Christie called Trent's Last Case "One of the three best detective stories ever written". Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that "It shook the little world of the mystery novel like a revolution ... Every detective writer of today owes something, consciously or unconsciously, to its liberating and inspiring influence." It was still admired in the second half of the century; literary critic Jacques Barzun, co-author of A Catalogue of Crime (1971), included it in his top ten mystery novels, as did mystery novelists Reginald Hill and Peter Straub. In his critique of the mystery genre, The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler ridiculed some plot points that he considered "I have known relatively few international financiers, but I rather think the author of this novel has (if possible) known fewer." According to Aaron Marc Stein in his introduction to the 1977 edition, published by University Extension of "At the risk of bringing down on his memory the wrath of the Baker Street Irregulars it must be recorded that Bentley had reservations about even the Conan Doyle originals. He deplored the great detective's lack of humor and he was irritated by the Sherlockian eccentricities.... Bentley had the idea of doing a detective who would be a human being and who would know how to laugh."