E.C. Bentley was born in 1875 and educated at St Paul’s School, London, where he met eminent critic and author G K Chesterton, who became his closest friend.
Bentley began a lifelong career in journalism in 1902, working for ten years on the editorial staff of the Daily News and for a further twenty years on the Daily Telegraph. In 1905, he published `Biography for Beginners’ (under the pseudonym E Clerihew), which was a volume of nonsense verse consisting of four-lines and called `Clerihews’ (in his honour), which became as popular as the limerick form. Two further volumes followed in 1929 and 1939.
Bentley’s masterpiece, `Trent’s Last Case’ (1913), was written in exasperation at the infallibility of Sherlock Holmes and marked the beginning of a new era in detective fiction. Indeed, it has long been hailed as marking the start of the 'Golden Age of Crime Fiction' and the first truly modern mystery. The sequel, `Trent’s Own Case’, did not appear for a further twenty three years and this was then followed by a book of short stories; `Trent Intervenes’.
Of `Trent's Last Case’ Agatha Christie wrote: 'One of the three best detective stories ever written’, whilst Dorothy L Sayers stated `It is the one detective story of the present century which I am certain will go down to posterity as a classic. It is a masterpiece’.
