A review by poojapillai
Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley
5.0
'Trent's Last Case' (1913) is, ironically, the first in the Trent series by EC Bentley. It's a short series, admittedly, running to only two more books, but with this first book, Bentley shook up the detective fiction scene which was at the time mostly dealing out Sherlock Holmes clones. He in fact wrote the book as an anti-thesis to everything that the standard detective story had come to stand for: nor only was Trent a genial, conversation *normal* human, but he was also prone to mistakes. Major ones. Like taking all the evidence & arriving at a completely, awfully wrong solution to the point where he had to have his errors pointed out to him by the actual murderer. I wasn't at all surprised to learn that this was one of the books that heralded the beginning of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
But this a delightful book not just for the twist at the end (and this was the first novel to do the Twist, by the way), but for the way it leavens the narrative with humor, makes the conversations between its characters seem like things people would actually say to each other and for that marvelous, marvelous first chapter. In fact, I defy anyone to find an opening chapter in any other crime novel that so expertly introduces us to the victim while also folding in socio-economic commentary AND snark.
But this a delightful book not just for the twist at the end (and this was the first novel to do the Twist, by the way), but for the way it leavens the narrative with humor, makes the conversations between its characters seem like things people would actually say to each other and for that marvelous, marvelous first chapter. In fact, I defy anyone to find an opening chapter in any other crime novel that so expertly introduces us to the victim while also folding in socio-economic commentary AND snark.