TRENT'S FEW
CASES:
The Detective
Fiction of E.C. Bentley
“There are few, if any, better
detective
stories…”
– Times Literary Supplement, 20th February 1913
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“I had thought, until I finished Trent Intervenes in
one regrettable gulp,
that absolute originality in the handling of short stories had died
with Father
Brown or was lingering lazily with Reggie Fortune.”
–
Torquemada, Observer, 17th July 1938
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EC Bentley’s reputation rests on three
books: Trent’s Last Case (1913), a
book with the monumental importance of The
Innocence of Father Brown, and a novel and a collection of short
stories published
a quarter of a century later: Trent’s Own
Case (1936) and Trent Intervenes (1938). That reputation is entirely justified, for
they are highly intelligent and witty works, with as much interest in
the
characters as in the detection, surprising last-minute solutions and a
detective who is ingenious but not quite correct. It
is fair to say that, without Bentley, the
works of Sayers and Christie would have been very different.
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What's New:
These pages copyright Nicholas Lester Fuller,
2000--2010. Created 3rd December 2004.
