Trent's Last Case

Infobox Book |
name = Trent's Last Case


image_caption = Cover of the fourth Nelson edition, 1917
author = Edmund Clerihew Bentley
country = U.K.
language = English
series =
genre = Mystery, detective fiction
publisher = Nelson (1st edition)
release_date = 1913 (1st edition)
media_type = Print (hardcover)
pages = 375 pp (hardcover 1st edition) = 212 pp (Paperback ?)
isbn = ASIN B0008977GS (hardcover edition), ISBN 0-89968-165-4 (2006 hardcover reprint)
followed_by = Trent's Own Case

"Trent's Last Case" is a detective novel written by E. C. Bentley and first published in 1913. Its central character re-appeared subsequently in Trent Intervenes and Trent's Own Case.

Plot summary

"Trent's Last Case" is actually the "first" novel in which gentleman sleuth Philip Trent appears. The novel is a whodunit whose unique place in the history of detective fiction is because it is at the same time the first major send-up of that very genre: Not only does Trent fall in love with one of the primary suspects — usually considered a no-no — he also, after painstakingly collecting all the evidence, draws all the wrong conclusions. Convinced that he has tracked down the murderer of a business tycoon who was shot in his mansion, he is told by the real perpetrator over dinner what mistakes in the logical deduction of the solution of the crime he has made. On hearing what really happened, Trent vows that he will never again attempt to dabble in crime detection.

According to Aaron Marc Stein, in his introduction to the 1977 edition published by University Extension of UCSD: "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."

Film adaptations

The novel was adapted into a silent movie directed by Richard Garrick in 1920.

A second silent adaptation was made by Howard Hawks in 1929.

The most recent film adaptation of "Trent's Last Case" was directed in 1952 by Herbert Wilcox. The 1952 film starred Michael Wilding as Trent, Orson Welles as Sigsbee Manderson, and Margaret Lockwood as Margaret Manderson.

References in other works

* The novel is read by detective Paul Artisan in "Bad Twin", a mystery novel authored by "Gary Troup" (Laurence Shames) as a tie-in for the TV series "Lost".

Release details

*1913, UK, Nelson (ISBN NA), Pub date 1913, Hardback (1st edition)
*1917, UK, Nelson (ISBN NA), Pub date 1917, Hardcover (4th edition)
*2005, USA, Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 1-84637-709-9, Pub date 31 October 2005, Paperback
*2005, USA, Echo Library, ISBN 978-1-84637-709-9, October 2005, Paperback

External links

*gutenberg|no=2568|name=Trent's Last Case
*imdb title|title=Trent's Last Case (1920)|id=0011788
*imdb title|title=Trent's Last Case (1929)|id=0020513
*imdb title|title=Trent's Last Case (1952)|id=0045259