Trent is a dilettante and artist who occasionally is requisitioned to solve murders by the editor of a London newspaper. Trent's Last Case concerns the mysterious death of an American multi-millionaire living in England and married to a young and beautiful wife. E. C. Bentley (1875 - 1956) was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics. The success of Trent's Last Case inspired him to write a sequel, Trent's Own Case (1936) and a book of Trent short stories, Trent Intervenes.