TRENT'S LAST CASE

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. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2009]