Trent's Last Case

Sigsbee Manderson, an American millionaire of enormous power, is found shot dead in the grounds of his English country house. Philip Trent, a painter and amateur detective, is sent by a newspaper to investigate, and he builds a brilliant chain of deductions. But he also falls in love with the dead man's young widow, Mabel, and finds that his clever solution may not be the whole truth.

E. C. Bentley (1875–1956), a journalist and friend of G. K. Chesterton, to whom the book is dedicated, published it in 1913 as a gentle mockery of the infallible detective, and it is often called the first modern detective novel. Compare Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.