Trent's Last Case (Paperback or Softback)

Trent’s Last Case (1913) is a detective novel by E.C. Bentley. Adapted three times for the cinema―including a 1952 feature film starring Michael Wilding, Orson Welles, and Margaret Lockwood―Trent’s Last Case, which was titled The Woman in Black in the U.S., earned the acclaim of such writers as Dorothy L. Sayers, and was followed by a sequel and a collection of short stories involving its main character.

When Sigsbee Manderson, a prominent American plutocrat, is murdered at his country estate in southwest England, Philip Trent, an amateur detective and freelance journalist, is hired to investigate the case. Aided by police, Trent begins his examination of the facts and evidence. Granted access to the body as well as the grounds of White Gables, Manderson’s estate, Trent concludes his investigation with a series of interviews. Beginning with Manderson’s wife, he uses his journalistic skill to collect information from the plutocrat’s secretaries, servant, and maid, as well as Nathaniel Cupples, Mrs. Manderson’s uncle and an old friend of Trent’s. When the coroner’s report is released, and in coordination with his own research, evidence suggests that Manderson was murdered due to some unknown business vendetta. There is reason to believe, however, that his death could have something to do with his troubled marriage, a possibility complicated by Trent’s growing attraction to Mabel, his widow. Unable to reach a conclusion, Trent embarks for Latvia to work as a traveling correspondent, but no matter how much time or distance he places between himself and White Gables, the questions and the mystery remain. Trent’s Last Case is a masterful detective novel by a writer whose reputation has unjustly faded over the past several decades.

This edition of E.C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case is a classic of English detective fiction reimagined for modern readers.

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With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

E.C. Bentley (1875-1956) was an English novelist. The son of a civil servant and international rugby player, Bentley was raised in London and attended the prestigious St Paul’s School before attending Merton College, Oxford. In his professional career as a journalist, he worked for several newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph and The Outlook. In his first published book of poems, Biography for Beginners (1905), he invented the clerihew, a form of rhyming light verse consisting of four lines satirizing the biography of its subject. Popularized by Bentley, the form would be used by numerous writers, including G.K. Chesterton and W.H. Auden. In addition to two subsequent collections of poetry―More Biography (1929) and Baseless Biography (1939)―Bentley published the successful detective novel Trent’s Last Case (1913). The novel, which has been adapted three times for the cinema, earned the acclaim of such writers as Dorothy L. Sayers, and was followed by a sequel and a collection of short stories involving its main character. Bentley served for a number of years as president of the Detection Club, a society of British mystery writers that included Sayers, Chesterton, Agatha Christie, and Hugh Walpole, among others. Recognized as a central figure for twentieth century detective fiction, Bentley has inspired generations of writers and readers.