Trent's Last Case
aka The Woman in Black
(Trent #1)
by E.C. Bentley
murder mystery
copyright 1913
read in January 2016
rated 7/10: well worth reading
I enjoyed this book :-) Nice characters, solid plot -- with twists. Set in the rather pleasant Wodehouse world. Not a deliberate Wodehouse world, just something about the era: some authors seemed to think that people were honest, life was good, there may be a villain but that was a rare occurrence.
All very nice.
The private investigator is quite a pleasant chap. Artistic, poetic, clever. He works, occasionally, as a reporter. So he solves crimes in order to write newspaper articles.
The investigator also works well with the police detective. They compete, but both want to solve the crime. They have somewhat complementary skills and are willing to admit this. Not that the policeman stays for long... The crime is formally wrapped up long before the private investigator gets to the bottom of the mystery !
A quick glance at Wikipedia and I read that Trent's Last Case is a spoof... And there I was, thinking it was just a murder mystery with several twists at the end ! Oh well...
The main twist -- I guess -- is that Trent solves the crime. Finds he is wrong. Solves it again... And so on. Which is really quite enjoyable...
I dislike murder mysteries. They throw up clues and red herrings. Then right at the end -- identify the murderer, tell you (often with very little justification) which clues were false, then end. If I pick a different set of false clues -- I get a different murderer !
Trent almost did this: laid out the clues (though with no false clues) then named the murderer. But wait, I thought, there's still a lot of book to go... So I had time to think. (Not that it helped. I had a few ideas. Some right, some wrong, no strength of conviction.)
Then Trent discovers more answers, filling in more of the mystery. It seems complete -- until the next chapter.
These are not *false* clues. It is a story of incomplete evidence. With clear pointers to that fact, that this cannot be the complete story. Pointers which are stronger than the number of remaining pages in the book !
The author is not playing with the reader. He is laying out a gradual revelation of the facts of the case.
I still did not beat the author to the true story. (Though an early guess proved correct -- long after I had rejected it :-)
It may be a spoof. It may not be a classic murder mystery. It is a very enjoyable book.
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"Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience."
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