Arden Bensenhaver

Arden Bensenhaver is the titular character in Garp's third novel, The World According to Bensenhaver. Bensenhaver is a police detective who works on the rape case of Hope Standish. His own wife was raped and murdered years earlier. Bensenhaver has no mercy for rapists, and he tampers with contradictory evidence in an effort to ensure that Hope's rape is seen exactly for what it is. Bensenhaver is forced to retire from the police force for his unorthodox methods, and Dorsey Standish, Hope's paranoid husband, hires the exdetective as a bodyguard for his family. Hope forces her husband to make Bensenhaver leave their home after she tires of the bodyguard's intrusion on their family's life. Bensenhaver later has a stroke and returns to the Standish home. He mistakes Dorsey Standish for an intruder one night and shoots him. He lives the remainder of his life in an old-age...