Finished reading: Trent’s Last Case by E. C. Bentley 📚A 1913 detective novel that has been acclaimed by mystery writers and buffs as in the top echelon of mystery novels. Well, not for its writing. The first chapter is interminable and would be jettisoned today. The characters all sound the same, like they’re saying stagey lines in a posh teddibly English upper-class melodrama. The detective is both a Bright Young Thing and a bit of a drip; who cares about his love life? And the authorial voice lays a thick smothery blanket over all. What makes the novel significant is its structure: the murder appears to be solved by the novel’s midpoint, but then the clues are reinterpreted later – and then reinterpreted again – continually pulling the rug out from under what the reader has been led to believe. At the time, it up-ended what writers and readers thought a mystery novel could do. Agatha Christie, who praised the book, must have had it in the back of her mind when she pulled the rug out from under the reader with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd twist ending.