E. C. BentleyRezensionen

Carl Schwartz burst into the living room of the Moon Valley Ranch house with fire in his eye and pathos in his voice: "As sheur as I standing here am, dot schwein I'm going to kill "' "I'll jest bet yer a million dollars ter a piece o' custard pie yer don't," said Bud Morgan, rising from the lounge where he had been resting after a strenuous day in the big pasture. "I'll pet you," shouted Carl. "Der pig pelongs mit me der same as you." "Go ahead, then," said Bud, lying down again. "But I want ter tell yer this, and take it from me, it's ez straight ez an Injun's hair, yer kin kill yer own part o' thet hawg if yer want ter, but if my part dies I'll wallop yer plenty. I've spent too much time teachin' thet pig tricks ter lose it now." "Vich part der pig you own, anyvay?" "Ther best part; ther head.


*Not* the book of the film with Dan Radcliffe (!)

Published in 1913, ahead of the stock market crash, this is the story of the death of an American investor, found shot on beside his garden shed in peculiar circumstances.

We know - or at least think we know - the murderer by the middle of the book and the second part of the book is concerned with proving it and a side dish of love affair.

Lots of talking (and therefore bulks of text), decent police procedural for it's time

Carl Schwartz burst into the living room of the Moon Valley Ranch house with fire in his eye and pathos in his voice: "As sheur as I standing here am, dot schwein I'm going to kill "' "I'll jest bet yer a million dollars ter a piece o' custard pie yer don't," said Bud Morgan, rising from the lounge where he had been resting after a strenuous day in the big pasture. "I'll pet you," shouted Carl. "Der pig pelongs mit me der same as you." "Go ahead, then," said Bud, lying down again. "But I want ter tell yer this, and take it from me, it's ez straight ez an Injun's hair, yer kin kill yer own part o' thet hawg if yer want ter, but if my part dies I'll wallop yer plenty. I've spent too much time teachin' thet pig tricks ter lose it now." "Vich part der pig you own, anyvay?" "Ther best part; ther head.


*Not* the book of the film with Dan Radcliffe (!)

Published in 1913, ahead of the stock market crash, this is the story of the death of an American investor, found shot on beside his garden shed in peculiar circumstances.

We know - or at least think we know - the murderer by the middle of the book and the second part of the book is concerned with proving it and a side dish of love affair.

Lots of talking (and therefore bulks of text), decent police procedural for it's time

E C Bentley - [The Complete Clerihews]
Gavin Ewart in his introduction to The Complete Clerihews published in 1951 says of the author:

Bentley was an intelligent Gent - and by this I mean a well educated member of the English upper classes. - liberal and uncensorious in his instincts, a member of the Fabian society at Oxford (but also an enthusiastic rowing man).

He became famous for writing short witty poems, named after his own middle name, which were designed to amuse.

Charles Dickens
It was a pity about Dickens
Insane jealousy of chickens
And one could almost weep
At his morbid mistrust of sheep

A more formal definition of the Clerihew is: a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed in two couplets, with lines of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose. It is short and pithy, and often contains or implies a moral reflection of some kind. The name of the individual who is subject of the quatrain usually supplies the first line:

Geoffrey Chaucer
Took a bath in a saucer
In consequence of certain hints
Dropped by the Black Prince

Cervantes
The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes
An opinion resented bitterly
By the people of Italy

Clerihews certainly enjoyed popularity and were ditties or poems that many people felt that they could have a go at - perhaps a bit like the Haiku today. As late as December 1980 the Weekend Competition in the New Statesman invited Clerihews on existing newspapers and magazines, and in 1981 the Sunday Times ran a clerihew competition.

Brahms
It only irritated Brahms
To be tickled under the arms
What really helped him compose
Was to be stroked on the nose

George Bernard Shaw
Mr George Bernard Shaw
Was just setting out for the war
When he heard it was a dangerous trade
And demonstrably underpaid

The Complete Clerihews which is apparently not complete is set out: one to a page with an amusing pen and ink illustration. Some of them refer to political or celebrity characters that have since faded into anonymity, but I loved them all, harmless fun with a sense of the absurd - 5 stars and I couldn't resist:

Mr Donald J Trump
Is really a bit of a chump
He once stood on the steps of the Capitol
But will soon disappear down a rabbit-hole.

Un libro di alti e bassi, con alcune buone trovate alternate a scelte discutibili.
Mi è piaciuto il tono scanzonato ed il fatto che parta con un'impostazione da giallo classico per poi sovvertirne la regola fondamentale, ossia l'infallibilità del detective: qui Philip Trent non ne azzecca una e deve essere guidato passo passo alla soluzione, con un doppio colpo di scena ben congegnato.
Il finale quindi è apprezzabile, ma lo svolgimento lascia molto a desiderare perché è piatto e troppo schematico, non stimola mai la curiosità del lettore. Il difetto peggiore però è la presenza ingombrante della love story tra il protagonista e la moglie della vittima: uno sviluppo di trama superfluo, che non si adatta alla leggerezza e all'ironia del romanzo e che finisce per occupare un posto troppo preponderante nell'intreccio, a discapito del mistero (che già di suo non era esattamente brillante).
Che dire dunque in conclusione? Giallo discreto, che si fa leggere ma non lascia il segno.½

This was an ok book, albeit not great. Some financial magnate, Sigsbee Manderson was found shot dead on his estate. One of the newspapers sent off Philip Trent to report on the issue, and also to do a spot of investigating on his own part. He teams up, so to speak with Inspector Murch.

Initially, it appears it might be a case of suicide, but a lot of minor details seem to point otherwise. There seem to be lots of suspects, but none on which one can pin conclusive evidence. In particular, one person who might have been involved is Manderson's spouse, Mable Manderson. For some reason, Trent falls in love with Mable, so he can't finger her for any complicity. Eventually, it all comes out, but the final solution is quite differently from what people imagined, and because Manderson was such a despicable ass hat, no one gets convicted of anything in the end.

I'm not quite sure what my son saw in this book to have him recommend to me. As I said, it was ok, but nothing special. It would be ***-, were GoodReads to allow us s or -s on our ratings.

review of
E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 18-20, 2019

The introduction by writer Dorothy Sayers states "you could have no idea how startlingly original it seemed when it first appeared. It shook the world of the mystery novel like a revolution, and nothing was ever quite the same again. Every detective writer of today owes something, consciously or unconsciously, to its liberating and inspiring influence." (p x) I'm inclined to agree that it's an important bk. It was originally copyrighted in 1913. I've only 'recently' become an appreciator of crime fiction, my experience w/ pre-1913 mysteries is limited to Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) & Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) & probably a few other authors that I'm forgetting at the moment. Trent's Last Case added a sense of moral uncertainty that might not've been there before. I liked Bentley's writing from the beginning:

"Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?

"When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as this dead man had piled up—without making one loyal friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honour. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of business as if the earth too shuddered under a blow." - p 3

The dead man's character, & character flaws, are put under exceptional scrutiny:

"Like the poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of Manderson's people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever will be, to stand in reverence by the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone." - p 10

"["]To take the Pennsylvania coal hold-up alone, there were thirty-thousand men, with women and children to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a hole throuhg the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his terms. Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr. Trent. There's a type of desperado in that kind of push who has been known to lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten what he did. They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had done them dirt in New Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the Atlantic is going to stop them?["]" - pp 87-88

Trent has entered the case as a reporter but he's known far & wide for his detective abilities so an unspoken agreement is reached w/ the police:

"The inspector would talk more freely to him than to any one, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities of every case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessary rules and limits. It was understood between them that Trent made no journalistic use of any point that could only have come to him from an official source. Each of them, moreover, for the honor and prestige of the instiution he represented, openly reserved the right to withhold from the other any discovery or inspiration that might come to him which he considered vital to the solution of the difficulty." - p 44

I suppose that one of the reasons why people enjoy detective stories is b/c we like to follow the investigator's procedure. Here, we get a little lesson in rigor mortis:

"There are many things that may hasten or retard the cooling of the body. This one was lying in the long dewy grass on the shady side of the shed. As for rigidity, if Manderson died in a struggle, or laboring under sudden emotion, his corpse might stiffen practically instantaneously; there are dozens of cases noted, particularly in cases of injuries to the skull, like this one. On the other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten hours after death. You can't hang anybody on rigor mortis nowadays" - p 63

Trent is inspired & instead of attending the inquest he goes off on more obscure paths:

"had there made certain purchases at a chemist's shop, conferred privately for some time with a photographer, sent off a reply-paid telegram, and made an inquiry at the telephone exchange." - p 89

Trent comments on the sameness of hotel rms, showing the homogenization of such things happening as early as 1913:

"["]Have you ever been in this room before, Cupples? I have, hundreds of times. It has pursued me all over England for years. I should feel lost without it if, in some fantastic, far-off hotel, they were to give me some other sitting-room. Look at this table-cover; there is the ink I spilt on it when I had this room in Halifax. I burnt that hole in the carpet when I had it in Ipswich. But I see they have mended the glass over the pciture of "Silent Sympathy," which I threw a boot at in Banbury.["]" - p 112

This bk was copyrighted 106 yrs ago. To people who read a fair amt, like I do, that doesn't seem long ago at all — after all, it was only 40 yrs before I was born. Nonetheless, think about the following:

"[']Do you recognize the powder inside it? You have swallowed pounds of it in your time, I expect. They give it to babies. Grey powder is its ordinary name—mercury and chalk. It is great stuff.[']" - p 113

Now cf that to today's take on the subject:

"Blue mass was used as a specific treatment for syphilis from at least the late 17th century to the early 18th. Blue mass was recommended as a remedy for such widely varied complaints as tuberculosis, constipation, toothache, parasitic infestations, and the pains of childbirth.

"A combination of blue mass and a mixture called the common black draught was a standard cure for constipation in early 19th century England and elsewhere. It was particularly valued on ships of the Royal Navy, where sailors and officers were constrained to eat rock-hard salted beef and pork, old stale biscuits (hardtack), and very little fruit, fiber, or other fresh food once they were at sea for an extended period.

"It was a magistral preparation, compounded by pharmacists themselves based on their own recipes or on one of several widespread recipes. It was sold in the form of blue or gray pills, or syrup. Its name probably derives from the use of blue dye or blue chalk (used as a buffer) in some formulations.

"The ingredients of blue mass varied, as each pharmacist prepared it himself, but they all included mercury in elemental or compound form (often as mercury chloride, also known as calomel). One recipe of the period included (for blue mass syrup):
• 33% mercury (measured by weight)
• 5% licorice
• 25% Althaea (possibly hollyhock or marshmallow)
• 3% glycerol
• 34% rose honey
Blue pills were produced by substituting milk sugar and rose oil for the glycerol and rose honey. pills contained one grain (64.8 milligrams) of mercury.

"Toxicity

"Mercury is known today to be toxic, and ingestion of mercury leads to mercury poisoning, a form of heavy-metal poisoning. While mercury is still used in compound form in some types of medicines and for other purposes, blue mass contained excessive amounts of the metal: a typical daily dose of two or three blue mass pills represented ingestion of more than one hundred times the daily limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States today."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_mass

Imagine all the brain damage & health problems that were caused by giving the stuff to babies! &, yet, drs wd've been pd to recommend it & pharmacists wd've pd to provide it! Now think about the current day: has the situation changed that much? Sure, now mercury's recognized as being toxic — but the death-hold that drs & pharmacists have on the vast majroity of people who're foolish enuf to believe in their priestcraft might very well be stronger than ever.

"'The people,' she said. 'Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must be for anyone who has lived in a world where there was always creative work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor; can you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you have to be rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all—where money is the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody's thoughts—where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work, that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller than the men who do, and vicious as well[']" - pp 122-123

Yeah, it's called capitalism.

By the by, I read aloud from Trent's Last Case in a movie of mine called Diabetes Type 2. The relevant section is here: https://youtu.be/2GLu66dgpKI?t=3599 .

"So strong had been the influence of the unquestioned assumption that it was Manderson who was present that night, that neither I nor, as far as I know, anyone else had noted the point. Martin had not seen the dead man's face; nor had Mrs. Manderson." - p 135

A similar element is used in Carolyn Wells's The Clue of the Eyelash (1933) so I wonder if Wells was influenced by Bentley. See my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2923714946 .

Anyway, the perpendicularity of my globularistic conditioning is an inherited traitess [pun intended]:

"[']It's just the same when we want to be serious; we mark it by turning to long words. When a solicitor can begin a sentence with, "pursuant to the instructions communicated to our representative," or some such gibberish, he feels that he is earning his six-and-eightpence.[']" - p 179

This is a good bk. Amen.

end was complete - very funny - surprise

E. C. Bentley was a member, and for a time, the President, of the Detection Club. The Detection Club was a group of English mystery writers who met regularly for dinner and talk in London. Dorothy Sayers, another member of the club, is one of my favorites. I read the WOMAN IN BLACK because I wanted to read some the other mystery writers associated with Sayers. I found his work to be more wordy than most current mysteries but the ending still contained quite a surprise.

Review to come

Big Ship
31 December 2021

The Last Case in a First Book
Review of the HarperCollins paperback edition (1978) including a Introductory note by Dorothy L. Sayers of the original Nelson hardcover (1913)

“One of the three best detective stories ever written.” - Agatha Christie.
“The finest detective story of modern times.” - G. K. Chesterton.
“One of the few genuine classics of detective fiction.” - The New York Times
“It is a masterpiece.” - Dorothy L. Sayers.

It has its faults, but Trent's Last Case still brings with it an ingenious solution, an elaborate explanation and a surprise twist ending that can still face down many up and comers in the detective story sweepstakes.

What makes it a classic most of all is that it was intended as a sendup of the genre in a friendly competition between writers G.K. Chesterton and E.C. Bentley. Bentley's dedication indicates it as a response to Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). Bentley has as his investigator an artist and journalist Philip Trent, who dabbles also as an amateur sleuth. The sendup is that even though Trent is able to construct an ingenious explanation for the crime, it is entirely wrong. This is then complicated by having yet another solution presented by one of the suspects and then a final twist solution on top of that which is again entirely different.

The result is that Trent states at the end of the book that it would be his last case: "he would never touch a crime mystery again," after having been doubly out-witted. Trent did in fact return though in two later sequel books Trent's Own Case (1936) and Trent Intervenes (1938).

The first-time reader is advised to skip the purple prose of the entire first chapter though, which provides an overly detailed and exaggerated description of the effect that the murder has on the entire financial world. It really has no bearing on the rest of the story, and it will likely try your patience and discourage you from continuing. Hardboiled crime writer Raymond Chandler in his putdown review in The Simple Art of Murder (1944) said that: "I have known relatively few international financiers, but I rather think the author of this novel has (if possible) known fewer."

Trent's Last Case is in the public domain and there are many downloadable eBook editions available. Goodreads links to several of them here.

I read Trent's Last Case as part of my continuing pandemic inspired survey of novels from the Golden Age of Crime including re-reads of books from my early reading days.

The style gets better as it goes along. It seems as if everything is neatly solved by Trent, but the book is only halfway finished; clearly, Trent didn't figure everything out. Once he does there is an interesting discussion of what I assume are actual murders and their motives.

The version I read has footnotes explaining Trent's literary references (when known---there's a request to share any others that the reader knows), British phrases, and an apology for the use of the N word in a silly song.

Trent, like P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith and Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, enjoys talking piffle. According to the Introduction, Bentley wanted to create a character with human characteristics. This is supposed to be an important book in the history of mysteries.

If someone doesn't die of natural causes, his death can either be murder, suicide, or accident. Bentley manages to have all three: Trent shows how the murder, X, killed his victim, Y, and then elaborately covered up his crime. He then learns that the motive he had assumed is wrong and eventually finds out that X, the man who did the elaborate coverup did so after he realized he was about to be framed by Y, a man willing to kill himself to avenge a perceived wrong; X realizes he is being framed because Y is too clever by half, albeit clever enough that X feels he must engage in this elaborate coverup because no one would ever believe that he is completely innocent. One of the two men to whom X tells his story, however, does believe in X's innocence, because, it turns out, he not only witnessed the death of Y, but was struggling with Y when the murder weapon accidentally went off. After these three possibilities, each one closer to the truth, are revealed, Trent realizes that reason is not enough to solve a crime and announces that this is his last case.½

Now I know why it has a lasting legacy

Quite clever

Read all the way to the end (which may sound odd)

Big Ship

19 Oct 2021

An American financier Sigsbee Manderson has been found dead at White Gables, Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. Inspector Murth investigates in 'competition' with private detective Philip Trent.
An entertaining historicalmurder mystery
Originally written in 1913

In Trent Intervenes, Trent solves a number of small mysteries; in Trent's Own Case Trent solves a murder which seems to implicate his best friend

Me gustan estas historias británicas de crímenes, quizá horribles pero nunca sórdidos, donde todo el mundo se comporta como es debido y no hay más violencia que la estrictamente necesaria. No sé si de verdad existe un mundo así, pero en todo caso mola. En esta obra incluso hay abundantes alusiones irónicas a lo brutos que son en Estados Unidos, donde parecen solucionar sus problemas a tiros y golpes. Hasta el muerto, que es norteamericano (y, por supuesto, riquísimo) se nos hace antipático.

Como digo, un magnate yanqui aparece muerto en una de sus casas en Gran Bretaña. Un periódico de fama envía a su especialista, un pintor al que contrata para estos casos y que, además, es muy aficionado a las citas poéticas. El pintor habla con todos los relacionados con el asunto: el mayordomo, una criadita francesa, los dos secretarios del finado (uno para las cuestiones personales, británico, y otro, norteamericano, para los negocios) y, por supuesto, con la viuda, además de con un tío de esta última y con el policía encargado. Prácticamente este es todo el elenco. Y, por descontado, parece imposible averiguar quién mató al muerto.

Además de la historia detectivesca, que acabará teniendo un final totalmente inesperado después de varias vueltas y revueltas, se cruza una bonita historia de amor, también con ciertas dosis de suspense hasta el punto de que al menos a mí no me ha quedado del todo claro si ella realmente le quiere a él. Si quieren averiguar quiénes son "ella" y "él", léanse esta estupenda novela. Hay garantías de pasar un muy buen rato.½

It is a mildly interesting who-done-it. I like mystery and thriller, but I thought this was a bit of a dud. Maybe a different version or single narrator would have made a difference. I listened to the LibriVox version.

This is a short, somewhat clever but mostly peculiar collection of poems by E.C. Bentley with nice illustrations by his friend G.K. Chesterton. Unfortunately, after so many years, many of the personages so honored have passed from the collective memory!½

This very enjoyable old-fashioned (because it is old) mystery introduces us to the great painter-detetective-newspaperman Philip Trent as he tries to solve the murder of an American multimillionaire at his British residence. There are lots of twists, lots of long conversations, and pages and pages of summing up, but it is a pleasure all the way (I read it in one day). If you have the version with the Dorothy Sayers introduction, DO NOT READ IT FIRST as it is full of semi-spoilers.

I have long enjoyed some of the better-known clerihews, especially with their witty illustrations, but I must say I found the complete set disappointing. I prefer the ones that actually relate to what is known about the life of the subject, but many of these are feeble combinations of modern (for their time) jokes with the name of the historical person, but no real relevance to the person's life.

I read this about 30 years ago and had forgotten most of it. So, I decided to re-read it. I'm sorry I did. The attitudes of the author are so uncomfortably racist/imperialist that I just had to give up when I reached the limerick towards the end. I did some research...Bentley worked as a journalist for "The Outlook" - an imperialist newspaper supposedly financed by Cecil Rhodes, the noted believer in white supremacy. So maybe Bentley's casual use of language reflects his world view more that just an "of the times" thing.

He is oddly out of date for the late 1920s in his views in other ways, too - towards women, towards science (that section about Mercury and Chalk, for example).

But for the fact that Marlowe (the dead man's private secretary) has to explain what a car's rearview mirror is, one would think this book was written in the 1930s, when many standards of the genre had already been established. Nope, the Golden Age was yet to happen. Trent is an artist, a gentleman, and an enthusiast at reasoning out mysteries, to the point that a London paper pays him occasionally to investigate and report on newsworthy crimes. Thus he finds himself investigating the puzzling death of Sigsbee Manderson, wealthy American businessman. Required reading for Golden Age fans.½

An eccentric millionaire philanthropist -- allegedly a saint, but facts quickly prove otherwise -- is shot in the back in his London pied a terre. Artist Phillip Trent, as before, offers to help Scotland Yard solve the crime. As it turns out, the old boy's schedule on the last day of his life was a great deal busier than initial reports might suggest, and had a lot more skullduggery in it. The mystery itself is pretty good, though I was annoyed at Bentley and co-author Allen for hiding the ball as to one item that comes up in an early chapter -- we're deliberately kept in the dark about it. And speaking of annoyance, Trent can be a bit of a pain. If one were stuck in a room with Philo Vance, Phillip Trent, and one's self, there'd be hardly a jury in the world that would convict on a charge of multiple homicide. The tossing off of substantial blocks of text in French is all well and good, but a bit of show-offery. Borderline recommendation.½

Well, you have to have an open mind and an appreciation for history, I think. For any modern mystery aficionado without these skills, they will likely be disappointed, just as those who don't care about bridges will be unmoved by examples of early bridges or Museums of Bridge Construction. So much is ridiculous by our standards--the detective, a newspaperman (not even a journalist, but an illustrator) is allowed unfettered access to roam the halls of a dead millionaire's home, questioning whomever, any suggestion that a lady might be less-than-honorable is met with horror from all parties, the stately home apparently has only two staff, and did you know the human bodies leaves fingerprints when they touch certain materials? It is assumed you don't, so early is this example.

It would be a two-star book if return today, because, well, it's just so awkward and kludgy, but I appreciate it in context, and it gets an extra bump for historical significance. Still, I hardly think anyone needs to read it--this is no classic of the stature of Dickens or Aeschylus, say--it's an early bridge, and that's about it.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

E. Clerihew Bentley,
Sent people up, but only gently.
What he wrote were ditties
Full of whimsical absurdities.

This was something of a palate-cleanser after reading several books of limericks, with all their attendant dirtiness.½

How can you solve a mystery?
Trent had a hard time in this story. The facts are unclear and the journalist detective, called an artist, struggled to grasp then. The death of an american millionaire and the characteristics of his life were at the center of this plot. The book has plenty of descriptions and the characters interacted in a crescendo. At the end, the murder was solved but now in a conventional way. This is a book written before de WWI. It contained the seeds of the british Golden Age mysteries. A good reading for mysteries lovers.