From time to time it is not bad at all to delve into a classic detective novel, the kind that make you think of the case as a labyrinth, and where the light of the investigator on duty shines on you as if it were an illusionist.
Great detective novels should blow your mind, surprise you with every new twist, and this genre is not widely cultivated in that strict sense these days. It will be a matter of editorial requirements, or of the most marked tendency of the crime novel, where many times the recreation of death and violence prevails more than the investigation of the case itself.
I do not mean by this that in this book The last case of Philip Trent go find a new Poirot, a Lord Peter Wimsey or a Sherlock Holmes. Quite the opposite. This book has a breaking point with the genre. Although only in the part that concerns the main character, the investigator. Although EC Bentley expressed a literary fatigue for Connan Doyle's novels, the truth is that, in the end, he ended up replicating that taste for the reader's involvement in the puzzle of the case.
The big difference, then, is who is in charge of the case. In this case we focus on Philip Trent, a painter by profession and research enthusiast (a kind of quixote of the time). In such a way, he usually indulges in murder cases, that he has ended up developing a great gift for detail and deduction.
When Sigsbee Manderson, an American potentate, is found assassinated on his estate, Philip begins to find aspects that the police have overlooked but which for him largely reveal what may have happened.
And then this little Quixote of the investigation launches to clarify the case. His path will not be easy, nobody will listen to him. But Philip sees it so clearly that he will not give up. Despite all the obstacles, it will end up showing the world what really happened to the deceased.
You can buy the book The last case of Philip Trent, the great novel by EC Bentley, here: