Trent’s Last Case (1913) - E. C. Bentley

Written by E. C. Bentley
Read by Simon Vance
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Philip Trent Series, Book 1
Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
Originally Published: 1999
Publisher: Tantor Audio , 2007

First published as The Woman in Black it is considered by many to be the first modern mystery novel, Trent’s Last Case introduces the gentleman sleuth Philip Trent, a freelance reporter and investigator.

On Wall Street, the mere mention of the name Sigsbee Manderson is enough to send a stock soaring—or bring it tumbling back to earth. Feared but not loved, Manderson has no one to mourn him when the gardener at his British country estate finds him facedown in the dirt, a bullet buried in his brain. There are bruises on his wrist and blood on his clothes, but no clue that will lead the police to the murderer. It will take an amateur to—inadvertently—show them the way.

Cheerful, charming, and always eager for a mystery, portrait artist and gentleman sleuth Philip Trent leaps into the Manderson affair with all the passion of the autodidact. Simply by reading the newspapers, he discovers overlooked details of the crime. Not all of his reasoning is sound, and his romantic interests are suspect, to say the least, but Trent’s dedication to the art of detection soon uncovers what no one expected him to find: the truth.

Simon Vance excels here at what he does best: portraying through accent, pace, and intonation the traditional British social outlook. Fans of the classic detective story will delight in a novel that’s wonderfully rooted in pre-WWI Britain - and probably could not have been written or published in any other time or place.

With its vintage race and gender attitudes and its bland and unquestioning assumptions about class, merit, and social standing, that milieu is as interesting, or more so, as the murder case that sends Trent into retirement. Perfectly articulated by Vance - whose mimicry of the female voice is not, alas, its finest feature - this novel from the old school is a curiosity, a connoisseur’s piece, and an afternoon’s worth of listening pleasure.

I used a written copy of the book to label the chapters. Book 2 of the series is Trent’s Own Case, book 3 is Trent Intervenes, a collection of short stories.