Best movies like Trent's Last Case

After finding her boss, a private detective, has committed suicide and has left her his agency, Cordelia Gray is asked to investigate the suicide of the man's son. During the course of her investigation, Cordelia becomes obsessed with the young man's memory and his increasingly suspicious death.

Private eye Edward Mercer travels to Venice to locate a man due a reward for his aid in the war. Shortly after arriving, he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his local contact. In his quest to clear his name, Mercer uncovers a conspiracy. Even the local magistrate seems to be working against him, and Mercer begins to suspect the man he came to find is behind it all.

Chicago psychiatrist Judd Stevens is suspected of murdering one of his patients when the man turns up stabbed to death in the middle of the city. After repeated attempts to convince the cops of his innocence, Dr. Stevens is forced to go after the real villains himself.

Early British thriller about a master criminal named 'Flash Jack', who heads a gang of top-hatted thieves that rob the wealthy. A detective tracks the crimes to a posh night club.

The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigates a series of murders in London in which the victims are killed according to their initials.

Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island and while they are waiting for the mysterious host to appear, a recording levels serious accusations at each of the guests. Soon they start being murdered, one by one. As the survivors try to keep their wits, they reach a disturbing conclusion: one of them must be the killer.

Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.

A homicide detective is forced to work alongside her ex-fiancé to investigate a murder that bears all the hallmarks of an infamous serial killer.

A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.

Steve Grey, reporter for the Daily Star, has a habit of scooping all the other papers in town. When Henry Mander is investigated for the murder of his shady business partner, Grey is one step ahead of the police to the extent that he often dictates his story in advance of its actual occurrence. He leads the police through an 'open and shut' case resulting in Mander being tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Columnist Mary Shannon is in love with Steve but she sees him struggle greatly with his last story before Mander's execution. When she starts typing out the story from his recorded dictation, she realizes why.

Wealthy Mr. Kennedy shoots his secretary, Channing, during a parlor game, but it turns out the gun was loaded with real bullets. Luckily, criminologist Phillip Montrose is on hand to help the police. When Kennedy quickly ends up dead as well, the police think it's a tidy murder-suicide, but the family lawyer knows of a letter that voiced Kennedy's suspicions about someone who was out to get him. Soon, the cops are on the trail of a ruthless and clever killer who is one step ahead of even Montrose.

A private investigator helps a former flame solve the murder of her wealthy grandfather, who lived in a sprawling estate surrounded by his idiosyncratic family.

In 1970s Hollywood, Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

In this send-up of the Humphrey Bogart detective films of the 1940s, a man idolizes Bogart so much that he has his features altered to look exactly like him and then opens up a detective agency under the name Sam Marlow.

Famous private detective Tip O'Neil is summoned by telegram to the estate of old friend Paul Harding, but finds the telegram was sent by Paul's attractive secretary, Amy Hutchins. Paul admits his dog was shot by extortionists to show they mean business, and shows Tip some threatening notes they sent. That night, Paul's ward, Corinne, is kidnapped by two gangsters and her driver is found dead the next morning. The kidnappers contact Tip demanding $200,000, which is delivered according to instructions. Awaiting the return of Corrine, Tip learns her fiancé, Gene Leland, is an ex-convict, and he also investigates why a thug, Maratti, was found prowling around the grounds, and why Paul's brother-in-law, Jim Glenray, was seen leaving the estate late the night before. And when the chauffeur is murdered with Amy's gun as he was about to confess some complicity, Tip has to piece together various clues to pinpoint the culprits.

Merle Kramer works as a stenographer for a psychiatrist. She is casually dating Karl Benson, a private eye and former cop. Merle mentions in passing that one of her boss's patients is an author with recurring dreams of murdering his wife, and she includes the fact that the wife owns valuable jewels. When the wife is found murdered in a manner identical to that of her husband's dream, the husband is naturally the prime suspect. But as the investigation of the police and insurance investigator Joe Cooper proceeds, it turns out that several people in the case, including Merle, are not what they seem.

Mysterious Orfamay Quest hires Los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlowe to find her missing brother. Though the job seems simple enough, it leads Marlowe into the underbelly of the city, turning up leads who are murdered with ice picks, exotic dancers, blackmailed television stars and self-preserving gangsters. Soon, Marlowe's life is on the line right along with his case.

In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief.

Jack, a Palm Beach detective, becomes involved in a case of multiple murders. All the women can be linked to Jack in some way. Jack and his partner have no leads, but numerous suspects. The murders continue, along with anonymous letters from the killer.

A wealthy man hires a detective to investigate his wife's mysterious past.

A private eye is hired by an insurance company to investigate a shipping magnate suspected of deliberately sinking his own ships for the insurance money. He finds himself involved in a web of deception, double-crossing and murder.

Michael Shayne is a private detective who is disliked greatly by Pete Rafferty, local chief of police detectives. Rafferty notifies the newspaper press that he is going to close Shayne's agency, just as Michael is about to be hired by the wealthy Eleanor Ramsey, who is being blackmailed. She is the stepmother of what she considers to be two grown-up brats, Dorothy and Ernest, and she considers their father to be of little value to the world himself. They all conspire to get their hands on her money, even to the extent of attempting to hire Shayne to frame an insurance robbery. Mrs. Ramsey is murdered, and Rafferty is trying to pin the killing on Shayne, despite the fact that suspicion points to Buell Renslow, brother of the slain woman. Shayne's secretary, the fetching Phyllis Hamilton, decides to do a little detective work to help her boss.

Science fiction serial.

An investigator for the District Attorney's office quits to open his own detective agency. However, business is so bad that he finally decides to give it up and go back to his old job. As his wife is at his office closing up, a wealthy society matron walks in with a case: she wants to know if her husband is having an affair with his ex-girlfriend, who is now married. The wife accepts what looks to be an easy case, figuring than she can then persuade her husband to re-start the agency. However, when the client's husband is found murdered, she decides to investigate the murder herself. Her husband has also been assigned by the D.A. to investigate the murder, and he doesn't know that his wife is also on the case. Complications ensue.

Convinced that she has what it takes to be a detective, inquisitive secretary Kitty O'Day gets her chance to put her sleuthing skills to the test when her investment broker boss is mysteriously murdered. But Kitty's investigation hits a snag when Inspector Miles Clancy begins to suspect that she's the culprit.

Six years after her husband's suicide, Jean Bruckner is dumbfounded by the news that he has recently been murdered! With the help of a private investigator, she heads to Chicago to uncover the truth behind her spouse's charade. The deeper she digs, the more danger she puts herself in. The truth may be out there, but she may get killed before she finds it!

Sandra Brown’s “Smoke Screen” follows newswoman Britt Shelley (Jaime Pressly), who shockingly wakes up in bed next to the dead body of Detective Jay Burgess and is suspected of foul play. Five years prior, Jay’s lifelong friend Raley Gannon (Currie Graham) also woke up next to a dead body. After learning of Britt’s scandal and the similarities between their two cases, he realizes she might be his only chance for vindication. As the two unravel their mysterious cases together, they find themselves caught in a dangerous political cover-up involving arson and murder.

A case involving adultery, money and murder threatens a private eye's sobriety.

Valerie's husband Darryl leaves for work as usual, but never returns. She hires private eye Shepard to find him. Soon he discovers that David had a second identity and obviously doesn't want to be found. But since Shepard is strongly attracted to the pretty Valerie, he investigates further and gets involved more than professionally.

When Richard Logan, the partner in a safe making firm, is found unconscious, on an old deserted bomb site, he finds that he has no recollection of the last three weeks. Then he discovers that the private detective, hired by his wife, has been found murdered, and a safe that his firm installed in a large country house, has been cleverly opened, and the contents are missing. So with the help of his wife, he sets out to uncover the truth.

A beautiful showgirl, name "the Canary" is a scheming nightclub singer. Blackmailing is her game and with that she ends up dead. But who killed "the Canary". All the suspects knew and were used by her and everyone had a motive to see her dead. The only witness to the crime has also been 'rubbed out'. Only one man, the keen, fascinating, debonair detective Philo Vance, would be able to figure out who is the killer. Written by Tony Fontana

A ruthless, crooked stockbroker is murdered at his luxurious country estate, and detective Philo Vance just happens to be there; he decides to find out who killed him.

When a Texas playboy is murdered in a New York City nightclub the Falcon investigates. When he learns that the victim was slipped rattlesnake venom, the trail leads to Texas, his own kidnapping and near death.

An elderly detective sets out to find who murdered a lecherous stage actor. His estranged wife? His would-be fiancee? Her father? Her boyfriend? A suicided actress's sister? The temperamental prop man? Or maybe the show's talented female chimpanzee?

After a jeweler hires a private detective to help him find $50,000 missing from his company, he is murdered while attending a society party; and the private eye, aided by his comely secretary, vies with a bumbling police detective to find the murderer among several suspects, including the dead man's daughter, her current husband, her former husband, and an ex-convict.

The Devil Never Sleeps is a “whodunit” documentary about family secrets. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo received a phone call informing her of the mysterious death of her wealthy Mexican uncle Oscar. Officially ruled a suicide, Portillo’s relatives claimed murder, offering several possible suspects including a business partner, a ranch hand, and Oscar’s young widow who stood to inherit everything. Traveling to Mexico, Portillo attempts to learn the truth about her powerful uncle. Using interviews, old snapshots and home movies, she finds a complicated web of family secrets, intrigue, rumor and betrayal that makes her enigmatic uncle’s murder seem ever more likely, yet ever more obscure. As the Mexican saying goes, “When evil is lurking, the devil never sleeps.”

Roy Marsden returns as author P.D. James's indefatigable gumshoe, Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. This time, he's investigating the murder of a famous mystery writer whose body is found in the bottom of a dinghy on the Suffolk coast. To add a further degree of difficulty, Dalgliesh must contend with a colleague on the case, the aptly named Inspector Reckless.

Detective discovers that a colleague's death is tied into the disappearance of a wealthy playboy's wife.

Haunted by the murder of her politician husband 6 years ago, former police detective Joanne Kilbourn (Wendy Crewson) keeps looking for clues, with the help of her old partner (Victor Garber). When a prime suspect is caught, it looks as if the killer may finally be brought to justice … but in a shocking turn of events, the suspect is gunned down as he's brought to the police station. Is there more to her husband's death than Joanne realized?

Jim Ackland, who suffers from a head injury sustained in a bus crash , is the chief suspect in a murder hunt, when a girl that he has just met is found dead on the local common, and he has no alibi for the time she was killed.

During a murder hunt game at a country house, to which Hercule Poirot is invited as an "expert", a real murder occurs.

A down-and-out student is hired to kill a wealthy woman. When someone else is suspected of the crime, the student taunts police until they realize that they may have to wrong man.

Charlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites, and all three victims were connected with the conviction and execution of an evidently innocent man.

Police Inspector Ghote lives a middle-class life in Bombay along with his wife, Pratima. He has been employed with the Bombay Police for many years. He is assigned to investigate the deadly assault on a Parsi man named Perfect, who is the Secretary of Lala Heera Lal, a wealthy man with underworld links. Inspector Ghote commences his investigation and is displeased when his superiors ask him to work with a Swedish Forensic Expert by the name of Axel Svennson.

Bubba Mabry, a gullible private detective, becomes the prime suspect in a tabloid reporter's murder after being hired to snoop on him by a mysterious celebrity.

Suave private investigator Norman Conquest intercepts a secret message and meets a beautiful but foreign blonde lady in room 605 of the Park Plaza hotel. But when Conquest wakes up in the room the next morning he is lying next to a dead body. With the mysterious blonde nowhere to be seen, Conquest soon becomes the police s number one suspect with Inspector Williams following his every move. In order to clear his name, Conquest enlists the help of Pixie Everard (Joy Shelton), but the going gets rough when he discovers that the murder is connected to a stash of stolen diamonds. As gun-happy gangs of communists and Nazi sympathizers turn up the heat, Conquest has to solve the murder whilst staying one step ahead of both the gangs and the police.

Detective Inspector Campbell (Gordon Jackson) looks into the murder of a teacher at a girls school where there are a number of suspects, including her colleagues and the married man she had been seeing.

A police detective suspects that his sister's boyfriend is a murderer.

Ed Harwood, a wisecracking private investigator from New York, discovers a crime at an hotel in Nice during a carnival. The unraveling of the mystery which lies behind will lead him and Caryl Fenton, a female insurance agent, who will become his companion, first to Paris, then to London, later through the English countryside and finally to Southampton, in search of a criminal train wrecker.

Who killed the vicious millionaire Sigsbee Manderson? Not that pretty wife of his, surely? Philip Trent investigates.