Paul Trent

Born on April 22, 1872, Edward Platt was educated at Matlock and Cheltenham College. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he trained as a solicitor and qualified in 1895. He also briefly played goalkeeper for Gloucester Football Club, but law and writing soon became the main threads of his career.

Platt moved in lively literary and artistic circles in London and was said to have known figures such as Arnold Bennett, Augustus John, and Jacob Epstein. In the late 1890s he left legal work behind and began writing fiction under the pseudonyms Paul Trent and Wilmot Kaye. The name Paul Trent eventually became the one by which he was best known both publicly and professionally.

Over the course of his career, he produced an extraordinary number of books — more than 100 according to family-history sources — including mysteries, thrillers, romances, and adventure stories. Titles associated with him include The Craven Mystery, The Crooked Samaritan, Quayle of the Yard, and The Air Bandits. He died on May 21, 1946, in Hammersmith, leaving behind the record of a remarkably hardworking popular novelist.