Friday's Forgotten (or Overlooked) Book: TRENT'S OWN CASE (1936) by E. C. Bentley

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Thanks to my blogging friend Joan's generosity, I was able to read E.C. Bentley's TRENT'S OWN CASE (published in 1936) and if after reading my review you feel as if you might like to read it, I'll be happy to pass it on. Though you must live in this country since I can't afford sending books overseas anymore. Sorry. Oh, meant to say: this applies to the first reader who lets me know with a comment requesting the book. In case of a tie, I'll toss a coin. Then maybe that person can pass it on and so on and so forth.

This second book featuring artist and occasional sleuth Philip Trent published 23 years after the original TRENT'S LAST CASE which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, is, to my mind, equally as good as the first (which is usually seen on lists of the 100 Best Mysteries), though some may disagree.

The irrational behavior of his friend, psychologist Brian Fairman, plunges Trent into a race against time to save Fairman from being booked and tried for the murder of philanthropist James Randolph, an intransigent rich guy with peculiar habits. The fact that Fairman has confessed to the crime doesn't help matters any. That this puzzle also involves a lady in distress goes hardly without saying. This time out it's the glamorous Eunice Faviell, an actress and friend of Trent and his wife, who has suddenly found herself at the center of old man Randolph's unexpected attentions. This is the same young woman for whom Brian Fairman has nurtured an unrequited love for years.

The plot thickens.

A plot which includes not only murder but blackmail and debauchery (life in between wars, you know how that goes) and is, by the way, full of intriguing destinations and characters including Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Gideon Bligh (another of Trent's friends), Simon Raught, a sinister servant who obviously knows more than he's telling, Verney, the dead philanthropist's devoted private secretary who is now out of a job he loves, Eugene Wetherill, a nefarious villain and enemy of Trent's as well as a sometime lover of Eunice Faviell (whose taste in men must be seen as defective) and last but not least, Trent's sweet old aunt who is just off on a trip to the Continent.

Seeing his aunty safely on board the train, Trent catches a glimpse of a very agitated Brian Fairman who leaps aboard at the very last minute. When later, returning to England, Fairman is taken into custody for attempting suicide, Trent knows all is not as it should be.

To clear his friend, Trent is soon off to Dieppe, following in Fairman's mysterious footsteps to a small French 'commune'. The trip seems at once senseless and bizarre ending as it originally did in Fairman's attempted suicide. But Trent perseveres.What is it about Dieppe?

What I loved best about TRENT'S OWN CASE:

1) No long-winded descriptive character background to begin the book which I found slightly off-putting in the first of the Trent adventures. Though this book too refers to the murder of an unlikable rich man.

2) The brisk nature of the writing more in keeping with the 30's, which I found very enjoyable even when venturing far afield into long ago scandal and seemingly unrelated events. Obviously the first book, having been published in 1913, was written in a more flowery, Edwardian sort of style which takes a little getting used to.

3) The labyrinthian plot which drops a major clue in the second chapter or so which comes back in a flash near the end. At least it did so to me.

4) The various destinations, including the aforementioned Dieppe, a place I'd never heard of except vaguely in WWII history. But even more did I love Trent's happy life in the English Cotswolds:

Trent had discovered the Cotswold country as a very young man, newly land-conscious, when it had appealed to him with an irresistible compulsion. There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now...Trent in his travels, had often chanced upon a house, a town or a stretch of country, unknown to him in terms of normal experience, which claimed him as its own with unerring certainty. As it had once been on a magic day in Tuscany, driving up to Montalcino, so with that counterscarp of the Cotswolds overlooking the vale of Evesham. So he had set his heart on a long, grey, stone-tiled house, flanked by shaped yews, which stood on a terrace cut in the brow of a steep hill, with woods and fields and villages stretching away below to the barrier of the Malvern Hills, and a glimpse of the Welsh mountains beyond.

Sigh. That is just how I felt upon my one and only visit to the Cotswolds many years ago.

As I said, a very enjoyable book - perfect for a cold winter's night - which I'll be happy to pass along if anyone would care to read it.

Since this is Friday, it's time to check in at Patti Abbott's blog, Pattinase, to see what other forgotten or overlooked books other bloggers are talking about today. 

Friday's Forgotten Book: TRENT'S LAST CASE (1913) by E.C. Bentley

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I'd heard of this book over the years and always meant to read it but with one thing and another just never got the chance until this past month- helped by a free download from Project Guttenberg.

Next to Sherlock Holmes I believe this to be one of the first 'gentleman detective' whodunits in which an impressively prescient all-knowing detective with the correct class British accent makes his debut. Though Arthur Conan Doyle's writing style was much brisker and less flowery than Bentley's, TRENT'S LAST CASE is not much hindered by the tone of its occasionally overwrought early 20th century writing style - at least not so much as you might think. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you're in, you're in.

Not that our detecting genius Philip Trent knows what's what from the first, he just gives that impression. Unlikely as it may seem, Trent is apparently well known all over Britain as the prime crime solver. He is backed by a newspaper although he is not a regular reporter, just a crime solving journalist - apparently the one to go to when mysterious murder occurs and the police are baffled. In truth he is some sort of artist who manages to squeeze in his paintings between crime solving - or vice versa. He is unique in the annals of crime, I suppose - very choosy and select about the mysteries he will undertake to solve.

When renowned international financier (living in Great Britain) Sigsbee Manderson is found dead on the grounds of his estate, financial institutions around the world shudder in dread and the police are stumped. What was the dead man doing outside in the middle of the night? Was it suicide? If so, where is the weapon? And why was the dead man wearing such an odd assortment of clothing? Most importantly, why wasn't he wearing his dentures?

All questions are soon to be answered (apparently) by Philip Trent once he arrives on the scene and begins his immediate sleuthing.The odd thing is, to my  mind at least, that the cops don't seem to mind Trent's arrival and bustling interference. In fact, they welcome it.

Trent discovers that the wealthy and somewhat reclusive Manderson was a very difficult man to live with and had no friends to speak of. He did, however, have two secretaries, both male, one American, one British, and a staff of properly respectful if keen-eyed servants. He also had a beautiful wife - the melancholy Mabel, clearly unhappy in her marriage to the much older man.

Several stylistic 'rules' are broken in the telling of this tale which was occasioned by a challenge to Bentley by his friend, mystery writer G.K. Chesterton, to write a story about a 'new kind of detective.'

While Trent furiously deduces a solution to the whole mystery (quick as a wink in three days) he is hampered by the fact that he's fallen for the beautiful Mabel. There are several clever (if convoluted) twists in the story which are not unraveled until the very end. That Trent's initial deduction is completely wrong doesn't dawn on him until much later (he's gone away to mend his broken heart) when he has occasion to confront one of the initial suspects and get the full true story.

(Luckily, through some adroit plot machinations, no innocent person was arrested.)

To read more about TRENT'S LAST CASE and its author, please check out J. Kingston Pierce's post at one of the best mystery/thriller websites on the web, The Rap Sheet.

And since it's Friday, don't forget to visit Patti Abbott's blog, Pattinase, to see what other Forgotten or Overlooked Books other bloggers are talking about today.