Trent's Last Case (The Woman in Black)
Author: first_name: Edmund Clerihew
last_name: Bentley
Language: English
Year: 1913

<i>Trent's Last Case</i> (US title <i>The Woman in Black</i>) is actually the first novel in which gentleman sleuth Philip Trent appears. The novel is a whodunit whose unique place in the history of detective fiction is because it is at the same time the first major send-up of that very genre: Not only does Trent fall in love with one of the primary suspects — usually considered a no-no — he also, after painstakingly collecting all the evidence, draws all the wrong conclusions. Convinced that he