John Curran – Trent’s Last Case (страница 1)
‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’
Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929
Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollins
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Thomas Nelson and Sons 1913
Copyright © Estate of E. C. Bentley 1913
Introduction © John Curran 2017
Afterword © Estate of Dorothy L. Sayers 1978
Jacket design © HarperCollins
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008216269
Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008216276
Version: 2017-06-27
Contents
‘SOME time in the year 1910 it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to write a detective story of a new sort …’
Thus begins E. C. Bentley’s discussion of his famous novel,
‘It should be possible I thought, to write a detective story in which the detective was recognisable as a human being … It was not until I had gone a long way with the plot that the most pleasing notion of all came to me: the notion of making the hero’s hard-won and obviously correct solution to the mystery turn out to be completely wrong … In the result, it does not seem to have been generally noticed that
In the year 1910 the market for detective short stories was thriving. Sherlock Holmes had dominated for the previous two decades since his first
Edmund Clerihew Bentley was born in London in 1875; he won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford and it was while studying Law in London that he began writing for various newspapers and magazines including, for ten years, the
More whimsically, Bentley was also the originator of the four-line metrically-irregular verse that became known as the ‘Clerihew’. The earliest example dates from 1905:
‘Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.’
He made the acquaintance of G. K. Chesterton while at school and they remained lifelong friends; both were journalists and poets, novelists and short story writers; and, perhaps not surprisingly, their approach to detective fiction, each eschewing the idea of a Great Detective, was also similar. Later in their lives, both also were destined to be President of the Detection Club; Chesterton was its first President and, after his death in 1936, Bentley assumed the Presidential Robes—literally and figuratively—for the next thirteen years. While Bentley, in
Although he had never written a novel, Bentley felt that ‘It should be possible to write a detective story in which the detective was recognisable as a human being and was not so much the “heavy” sleuth.’ He tried, in his creation of a detective character, to get as far away from Holmes, the ‘Great Detective’, as possible. So, as he explained in a 1935 essay, Philip Trent:
‘… does not take himself at all seriously. He is not a scientific expert; he is not a professional crime investigator. He is an artist … who has strayed accidentally into the business of crime journalism because he found he had an aptitude for it, and without any sense of having a mission. He is not superior to the feelings of average humanity … he even goes so far as to fall in love. He does not regard the Scotland Yard men as bungling half-wits, but has the highest respect for their trained abilities. All very unlike Holmes.’
He planned the novel over a period of six to eight weeks, much of it while walking from his home in Hampstead to the offices of the
Another famous crime writer, John Buchan, was responsible for the UK publication. Buchan, whose archetypal
In planning the novel Bentley had listed some characters and situations then—and for many years following—considered necessary in a detective story: a murdered millionaire, his widow, her maid, a male secretary, a butler, a gifted amateur detective, a not-too-gifted policeman and a ‘perfect’ alibi; and they all duly appear. But in demonstrating his detective’s susceptibility to ‘the feelings of average humanity’, Bentley, very daringly, has him fall in love with one of the chief suspects. Will this cloud Trent’s deductive abilities? Will it, perhaps, prejudice his dedication to justice? Will it influence his solution?
And while Trent, and the reader, grapple with these conundrums, Bentley slyly detonates a plotting landmine … an even more ground-breaking innovation which immediately qualified