As president of Britain's Detection Club, Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) was a respected associate of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. His influential 1913 novel Trent's Last Case introduced Philip Trent, an artist and amateur detective who is in over his head. Decades later, Bentley wrote three sequels, two of which we are pleased to offer here.

Philip Trent isn't the most astute detective around, but he is unshakable. From 1938, this third book in the series collects 12 tales of the London-based sleuth, investigating crimes that range from fraud and embezzlement to criminal assault and murder. In such stories as "The Ordinary Hairpins," "The Public Benefactor," and "The Unknown Peer," Trent turns the genre on its head by being far more interested in cracking the case than in apprehending the culprit.