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    Trent’s Last Case
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    Trent’s Last Case
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    Trent’s Last Case
    Audiobook8 hours

    Trent’s Last Case

    Written by E. C. Bentley

    Narrated by Steven Crossley

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong.

    Trent’s Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth as they probe ever deeper in search of a solution to a mystery filled with odd, mysterious twists and turns.

    Called by Agatha Christie "one of the best detective stories ever written," Trent's Last Case delights with its flesh-and-blood characters, its naturalness and easy humor, and its style, which, as Dorothy Sayers has noted, "ranges from a vividly coloured rhetoric to a delicate and ironical literary fancy."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateAug 10, 2017
    ISBN9780008216283
    Author

    E. C. Bentley

    E. C. BENTLEY (Londres, 1875-1956) estudió en el St. Paul School y trabajó en el Daily News y el Daily Telegraph. La secuela de El último caso de Philip Trent (1913), Trent’s Own Case, no vería la luz hasta veintitrés años después.

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    Reviews for Trent’s Last Case

    3.5/5

    202 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction series. Very Clever twists. The light, amusing patter style and gentleman-detective amateur nicely handled. The victim, Sigsbee Manderson, is a capitalist-toad sucking the life of the people and is universally unmourned. The reader is quickly maneuvered into hoping that the guilty party gets away with it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Carl Schwartz burst into the living room of the Moon Valley Ranch house with fire in his eye and pathos in his voice: "As sheur as I standing here am, dot schwein I'm going to kill "' "I'll jest bet yer a million dollars ter a piece o' custard pie yer don't," said Bud Morgan, rising from the lounge where he had been resting after a strenuous day in the big pasture. "I'll pet you," shouted Carl. "Der pig pelongs mit me der same as you." "Go ahead, then," said Bud, lying down again. "But I want ter tell yer this, and take it from me, it's ez straight ez an Injun's hair, yer kin kill yer own part o' thet hawg if yer want ter, but if my part dies I'll wallop yer plenty. I've spent too much time teachin' thet pig tricks ter lose it now." "Vich part der pig you own, anyvay?" "Ther best part; ther head.


      *Not* the book of the film with Dan Radcliffe (!)

      Published in 1913, ahead of the stock market crash, this is the story of the death of an American investor, found shot on beside his garden shed in peculiar circumstances.

      We know - or at least think we know - the murderer by the middle of the book and the second part of the book is concerned with proving it and a side dish of love affair.

      Lots of talking (and therefore bulks of text), decent police procedural for it's time
    • 5/5
      end was complete - very funny - surprise
    • 4/5
      The style gets better as it goes along. It seems as if everything is neatly solved by Trent, but the book is only halfway finished; clearly, Trent didn't figure everything out. Once he does there is an interesting discussion of what I assume are actual murders and their motives. The version I read has footnotes explaining Trent's literary references (when known---there's a request to share any others that the reader knows), British phrases, and an apology for the use of the N word in a silly song. Trent, like P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith and Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, enjoys talking piffle. According to the Introduction, Bentley wanted to create a character with human characteristics. This is supposed to be an important book in the history of mysteries.If someone doesn't die of natural causes, his death can either be murder, suicide, or accident. Bentley manages to have all three: Trent shows how the murder, X, killed his victim, Y, and then elaborately covered up his crime. He then learns that the motive he had assumed is wrong and eventually finds out that X, the man who did the elaborate coverup did so after he realized he was about to be framed by Y, a man willing to kill himself to avenge a perceived wrong; X realizes he is being framed because Y is too clever by half, albeit clever enough that X feels he must engage in this elaborate coverup because no one would ever believe that he is completely innocent. One of the two men to whom X tells his story, however, does believe in X's innocence, because, it turns out, he not only witnessed the death of Y, but was struggling with Y when the murder weapon accidentally went off. After these three possibilities, each one closer to the truth, are revealed, Trent realizes that reason is not enough to solve a crime and announces that this is his last case.
    • 4/5
      An American financier Sigsbee Manderson has been found dead at White Gables, Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. Inspector Murth investigates in 'competition' with private detective Philip Trent.
      An entertaining historicalmurder mystery
      Originally written in 1913
    • 4/5
      This very enjoyable old-fashioned (because it is old) mystery introduces us to the great painter-detetective-newspaperman Philip Trent as he tries to solve the murder of an American multimillionaire at his British residence. There are lots of twists, lots of long conversations, and pages and pages of summing up, but it is a pleasure all the way (I read it in one day). If you have the version with the Dorothy Sayers introduction, DO NOT READ IT FIRST as it is full of semi-spoilers.
    • 1/5
      I read this about 30 years ago and had forgotten most of it. So, I decided to re-read it. I'm sorry I did. The attitudes of the author are so uncomfortably racist/imperialist that I just had to give up when I reached the limerick towards the end. I did some research...Bentley worked as a journalist for "The Outlook" - an imperialist newspaper supposedly financed by Cecil Rhodes, the noted believer in white supremacy. So maybe Bentley's casual use of language reflects his world view more that just an "of the times" thing. He is oddly out of date for the late 1920s in his views in other ways, too - towards women, towards science (that section about Mercury and Chalk, for example).
    • 4/5
      But for the fact that Marlowe (the dead man's private secretary) has to explain what a car's rearview mirror is, one would think this book was written in the 1930s, when many standards of the genre had already been established. Nope, the Golden Age was yet to happen. Trent is an artist, a gentleman, and an enthusiast at reasoning out mysteries, to the point that a London paper pays him occasionally to investigate and report on newsworthy crimes. Thus he finds himself investigating the puzzling death of Sigsbee Manderson, wealthy American businessman. Required reading for Golden Age fans.
    • 3/5
      Well, you have to have an open mind and an appreciation for history, I think. For any modern mystery aficionado without these skills, they will likely be disappointed, just as those who don't care about bridges will be unmoved by examples of early bridges or Museums of Bridge Construction. So much is ridiculous by our standards--the detective, a newspaperman (not even a journalist, but an illustrator) is allowed unfettered access to roam the halls of a dead millionaire's home, questioning whomever, any suggestion that a lady might be less-than-honorable is met with horror from all parties, the stately home apparently has only two staff, and did you know the human bodies leaves fingerprints when they touch certain materials? It is assumed you don't, so early is this example.

      It would be a two-star book if return today, because, well, it's just so awkward and kludgy, but I appreciate it in context, and it gets an extra bump for historical significance. Still, I hardly think anyone needs to read it--this is no classic of the stature of Dickens or Aeschylus, say--it's an early bridge, and that's about it.

      (Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
    • 4/5
      How can you solve a mystery?Trent had a hard time in this story. The facts are unclear and the journalist detective, called an artist, struggled to grasp then. The death of an american millionaire and the characteristics of his life were at the center of this plot. The book has plenty of descriptions and the characters interacted in a crescendo. At the end, the murder was solved but now in a conventional way. This is a book written before de WWI. It contained the seeds of the british Golden Age mysteries. A good reading for mysteries lovers.
    • 4/5
      Two main thoughts upon finishing this novel. One, the murderer, motive, and mysteries were much more complex than I guessed at when I was only a third of the way through. Two, if this is how people spoke at that point in time, the English language has undergone a sad sad diminishing. Enjoyed it, but it's filled with poetical references and "high falutin'" language, so it's not an easy read.
    • 3/5
      Who did it was a complete surprise to me! However, I found Trent to be a bit too "precious" for me and as a result found the story dragged in several places.
    • 3/5
      Considered a bit of a breakthrough in the detective story because the sleuth is a bit of a bumbler, not the omniscient genius in the Sherlock Holmes mode. The classical education of the early twentieth-century British writer shows in the lengthy, but well-punctuated and readable, sentences. Although the somewhat florid writing would not pass muster with today's editors, it does not detract overmuch from the story. Trent, the detective, may have influenced Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey as he has the same propensity to "talk piffle," scattering allusions here and there. I more or less figured out the solution, but partly that's because the Dover edition I got from the library had a spoiler on the back cover! At the very end there is a distressing bit of that nearly unconscious racism that white writers were so prone to in those days (1913).
    • 4/5
      Philip Trent has been called in by the newspaper to get to the bottom of a story and crime. He has has success on a few other cases, and everyone looks to him with high expectations. But somehow, the story never gets published. I enjoyed it, although it seemed a bit quaint in some of the mannerisms and language. Other parts seemed exceedingly modern for its times. As a murder mystery, it completely fooled me, and yet the author played fair all along. Reading it, I could certainly see the seeds of Lord Peter Wimsey, Poirot and many other detective stories of the Golden Age of mysteries. Loved the dedication to Chesterton, and Sayers' introduction was a good comparison and illustration to show why this is a special mystery. Also, I don't know who did the cover on my version, but I love the look of Philip Trent on it, even though I think the story said he had sandy tousled hair.
    • 5/5
      This classic book deserves its reputation. Published in 1913, it involves a rich mean guy being killed on his south England estate and Phillip Trent is called in to solve the case. I had my own idea for the solution but of course it was not the author's--but was perfectly logical if one leaves aside the question of character. I almost gave this book five stars!
    • 3/5
      Considered the grandaddy of 20th c. murder mysteries, this is Bentley's first novel written in 1912 in response his friend G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday. Trent is a freelance reporter investigating the mysterious death of a wealthy English baron. This is a true whodunit, and you probably won't guess correctly. Agatha Christie obviously learned something from this Brit mystery, and she used it to write better, more clever novels.
    • 4/5
      A little dry but good