Trentâs Last Case
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Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case 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.
Trentâs Last 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."
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Edmund Clerihew Bentley was born in London in 1875; he won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford and it was while studying Law in London that he began writing for various newspapers and magazines. Although called to the Bar in 1902, most of his working life was spent at the Daily Telegraph, although he âretiredâ from journalism in 1934, with the outbreak of WWII and the call-up of younger men, he returned as literary critic in 1939, eventually leaving in 1947.
He made the acquaintance of G. K. Chesterton while at school and they remained lifelong friends. Later in their lives, both also were destined to be President of the Detection Club. Bentley contributed to the early collaborative efforts of the Detection Club, Behind the Screen and The Scoop in 1930 and 1931; and in 1938 edited an impressive anthology, The Second Century of Detective Stories. But his reputation as a detective story writer rests almost entirely on his first detective novel. He died in London in March 1956.
