Review: Trent's Last Case

Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An unusual classic mystery from a close friend of G.K. Chesterton's, best known as the inventor as the clerihew (that's what the C in his name stands for). He and Chesterton collaborated on several books, in which Bentley wrote biographical verses about famous people and Chesterton illustrated them.

In this book, Trent, a painter who routinely quotes English poetry like Lord Peter Wimsey (though different poets, I think), starts the book with an established reputation as an amateur detective. This reputation was established in adventures which were not chronicled prior to this one; this is the first book of what eventually became two novels and a collection of short stories, though internally it reads as if it's the end of the series. He's called in by a newspaper he occasionally works for to investigate the death of a prominent American financier currently staying in England, where he maintains a house. By coincidence, Trent knows the uncle of the financier's wife, and they meet at the nearby hotel and discuss the case.

The odd features include that the dead man appears to have dressed in a hurry, but also in a way that a person wouldn't normally dress (which, to me, instantly pointed to someone else having dressed him, but that's not a conclusion that Trent gets to straight away). He also behaved oddly on the night of his death. Also, nobody heard the shot that killed him, and nothing is missing, apart from half a bottle of whiskey.

From this intriguing base we get what is, for much of the time, not a conventional mystery at all. Trent investigates, finds clues, comes to a theory... but he has fallen in love with the widow, and thinks she might be involved at least indirectly, so he chooses not to pursue his main suspect. There's then a long interval in which he tries, unsuccessfully, to forget about his love interest. When things shift in such a way that he talks to the suspect after all, he finds that things were not at all as they appeared, and the book finishes with a startling twist, leading Trent to declare that this is his last case.

It has the poetic observations and the slightly askew quality one might expect from a friend of Chesterton's. It's not a formulaic book, by any means, which makes it interesting to me, and I think its departure from the expected mystery formula works.

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