by E. C. Bentley (Author)
"One of the few genuine classics of detective fiction." -- The New York Times. Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day -- particularly stories that featured infallible detectives of the Holmesian stripe -- Trent's Last Case (1913) features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong.
The case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth as they probe ever deeper in search of a solution to a mystery filled with odd, mysterious twists and turns. Called by Agatha Christie "one of the best detective stories ever written," Trent's Last Case delights with its flesh-and-blood characters, its naturalness and easy humor, and its style, which, as Dorothy Sayers has noted, "ranges from a vividly coloured rhetoric to a delicate and ironical literary fancy." New Introduction by Douglas G. Greene.
Back Jacket
A powerful and ruthless American capitalist is found dead in the garden of his English country house. But why is he not wearing his false teeth? Why is his young widow so relieved at his death? The artist and amateur detective Philip Trent arrives to find that there is more to the case than the solving of a puzzle: he must also accept his own fallibility, in detection and in romance.