Trent's Last Case

Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley

On Wall Street, the mere mention of the name Sigsbee Manderson is enough to rock a stock, or bring it back to earth. Feared but unloved, Manderson has no one to mourn him when the gardener on his British country estate finds him face down in the dust, a bullet buried in his brain. There are bruises on the wrist and blood on the clothes, but no clue that will lead the police to the killer. It will take an amateur to - inadvertently - show him the way.

Cheerful, charming and always eager for a mystery, portrait painter and gentleman investigator Philip Trent throws himself into the Manderson affair with all the passion of the self-taught. By simply reading the newspapers, he uncovers overlooked details of the crime. Not all of his arguments are valid, and his romantic interests are suspect, to say the least, but Trent's dedication to the art of individuation soon discovers what no one expected him to find: the truth.

Delightfully irreverent yet ingeniously crafted, Trent's Last Case is widely regarded as a masterpiece of the mysterious genre.