Trent’s Last Case

In Trent’s Last Case, E. C. Bentley offers a fiction, mystery first published in 1913. At its center are secrecy, evidence, motive, and the difficult search for truth, developed through the conventions and freedoms of fiction, mystery. As part of a series, the book also contributes to a larger imaginative or narrative design while retaining its own identity. The book’s distinctive character comes from a carefully controlled structure that rewards attention to detail and shifting suspicion. At roughly 75,532 words with a fairly easy reading profile, it offers a reading commitment that is easy to judge before beginning while still leaving room for close attention. Readers still return to it because of its role in shaping the pleasures and conventions of detective and suspense fiction. Readers drawn to fiction, mystery and secrecy will find a work that combines a distinct period voice with questions that remain recognizable today. Because the work leaves space for judgment rather than reducing its ideas to a simple lesson, different readers may find different points of emphasis within it.