The Woman in Black by E.C. Bentley
Not the horror one, the other one.
Detectives today are loud, sexy and emotionally driven folks living in denial, bobble heads wearing tight clothes and showing off skills while having a golden heart, feeling love and loyalty. At least that’s what the legend of Sherlock modified for modern television and cinema tells me about them.
(It is not hard to notice that the exponentially lovable bond between Sherlock and Watson is so prevalent in Guy Ritchie’s version, BBC Sherlock and even sleep-inducing Elementary. Sherlock is far more eccentric with so many moments of true friendship and other emotional motivations. However, the books are subtle with the bond, it is more about the case than the people. Seems more enjoyable.)
While the cases range from amazing and believable to boom-bam-blast-superhero-detective-what-is-even-happening type, I feel a missing sense of class in the great skill of detective work. I was fairly satisfied by Broadchurch, and am not the one to resist great storytelling, but it was when I watched BBC production of ‘’And Then There Were None’, the three episode adaptation of Agatha Christie’s book of the same name, I realized I desired the strong and skilled detective who did more work and spoke much less.
A classic whodunit tale with the detective Philip Trent is known to be crucial in exploring this genre of books. In many ways, this book contains the occupational sins of a detective. Trent is torn by this case, and the end doesn’t leave much room for a reader to love or admire the detective. As the book’s original title suggest, it turns out to be his very last criminal case. But something about they way he conducted his investigation, his manner made him enjoyable to read. He is a drastic departure from the Sherlockian type of stories, Trent is normalized to the degree that he does not gain sympathy. He makes mistakes, laughs at situations, eats, sleeps, a person who is beyond his detective work, a living breathing human. He isn’t crazy or obsessive, he relies on help and makes deductions that may or may not be wrong. Bently wrote this character in response to the detectives of eccentricities, and fans of cosy detective stories are sure to enjoy it.
Some quotes from the book
Opening line of the book:
“Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?”
“It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts, you must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great deal of both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a profession not favorable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.’
“I am quite fond of railway-traveling, you know; I have a gift for it. I am the stoker and the stoked, I am the song the porter sings.”
“His judgment of persons was penetrating, but its process was internal; no one felt on good behavior with a man who seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed the age of laughter and adventure.”
“The two men got on well; for Trent possessed some secret of native tact which had the effect of almost abolishing differences of age between himself and others.”
“Trent and he, through some obscure working of sympathy, had appreciated one another from the beginning, and had formed one of those curious friendships with which it was the younger man’s delight to adorn his experience.”
“These had a very uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never taken from their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English novelists, essayists, historians and poets stood ranged like an army struck dead in its ranks.”
“Who does not know what it is to feel at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well with him? — not the feverish confidence of men in danger of a blow from fate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an unsought conviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that success is at hand in some great or little thing. The general suddenly knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on the green suddenly knows that he will put down the long putt.”
“Let’s you and I hope we never see anything nearer hell than what’s loose in the Street this minute.”
“An exaggerated chivalry had lived in him since the first teachings of his mother; but at this moment the horror of bruising anything so lovely was almost as much the artist’s revulsion as the gentleman’s.”
