Mystery Review: Trent's Last Case is actually the first case for Philip Trent, famous artist, journalist, and amateur solver of crime problems. For those who felt Sherlock Holmes was too affected, arrogant, or simply annoying, Trent was an antidote. More human and fallible, someone who enjoys a good meal and a glass of wine even as he brilliantly proposes the wrong solution and falls madly in love with the chief suspect -- he's certainly no Holmes. Trent relies on fingerprints, footprints, and examines crime scenes with a painter's gimlet eye. The story and tone veer wildly, however, as if Bentley was trying to figure out what kind of story he wanted to write even as he was writing it. Trent's Last Case has a healthy dose of romance, interesting comparisons of Britons and Americans, and piles twist on twist in a messy ending. The original title was The Woman in Black (suggesting an entirely different focus) for the first edition, but has been Trent's Last Case ever since. Even though titled the "last case" it was followed by two more outings for Trent decades later in another novel and a short story collection. Intended by its author as "not so much a detective story as an exposure of detective stories." Perhaps it was a mild satire, but has been accepted as a classic in the genre, and a precursor of the Golden Age of mystery novels, offering an alternative to the more Holmesian (and more or less obnoxious) detectives that sprang up later like Poirot (1920), Wimsey (1923), Vance (1926), and Queen (1929). In intending to gently mock the genre in Trent's Last Case, Bentley in fact modernized and liberated the style with his more human detective. The novel is a little of its time in terminology, unfortunately. [3½★]
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