E.C. Bentleyund Clerihew Bentley, who generally published under the names E.C. Bentley or E. Clerihew Bentley, was a popular English novelist and humourist, and inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics. His best knwn one is

Sir Christopher Wren

Said, "I am going to dine with some men.

If anyone calls

Say I am designing St. Paul's".

Bentley's detective novel Trent's Last Case was much praised, (see back cover) and with its labyrinthine and mystifying plotting can be seen as the first truly modern mystery. It was adapted as a film in 1920, 1929, and 1952. The success of the work inspired him, after 23 years, to cowrite a sequel, Trent's Own Case (1936). There was also a book of Trent short stories, Trent Intervenes (1938).

From 1936 until 1949 Bentley was president of the Detection Club. He contributed to two crime stories for the club's radio serials broadcast in 1930 and 1931, which were published in 1983 as The Scoop and Behind The Screen. In 1950 he contributed the introduction to a Constable & Co. omnibus edition of Damon Runyon's "stories of the bandits of Broadway", which was republished in 1990 as On Broadway.

He died in 1956 in London at the age of 80. His son Nicolas Bentley was an illustrator.

G.K. Chesterton dedicated his popular detective novel on anarchist terrorism, The Man Who Was Thursday, to Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a school friend.