Best "Thinking Machine" Detective Stories

by Jacques Futrelle, E.F. Bleiler (Editor)

In this volume the editor has selected the ten best stories about the Thinking Machine (Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen), adventures that concern the a perfect alibi and a perfect accusation, an impossible theft of a container of radium, a precise sealed room mystery, a seeming flaming phantom, and other "impossible" mysteries. This is the first time that these stories have been available for decades.

Also included are two of the very earliest adventures of The Thinking Machine that have never been reprinted since their appearance in a local newspaper in 1905.

Genres: Mystery, Detective

241 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

Jacques Heath Futrelle (1875-1912) was an American journalist and mystery writer. He is best known for writing short detective stories featuring the "Thinking Machine", Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen. He worked for the Atlanta Journal, where he began their sports section; the New York Herald; the Boston Post; and the Boston American. In 1905, his Thinking Machine character first appeared in a serialized version of The Problem of Cell 13. In 1895, he married fellow writer Lily May Peel, with whom he had two children. While returning from Europe aboard the RMS Titanic, Futrelle, a first-cabin passenger, refused to board a lifeboat insisting his wife board instead. He perished in the Atlantic. His works include: The Chase of the Golden Plate (1906), The Simple Case of Susan (1908), The Thinking Machine on the Case (1908), The Diamond Master (1909), Elusive Isabel (1909), The High Hand (1911), My Lady's Garter (1912), Blind Man's Bluff (1914).

Reviews

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are supposed to be the best of Futrelle's detective stories about Professor Van Dusen. There are, in fact, a few really good ones here--"The Crystal Gazer," "The Brown Coat," and "The Problem of the Stolen Rubens" all qualify. There are actual clues that a reader might pick up on. There are actual clues that you believe Van Dusen picked up on. "His Perfect Alibi" comes close--the reader who actually "sees" what Van Dusen says happened should be able to figure it out. However, Van Dusen has no real evidence that such a thing happened. But since he says it must have happened, it did. And the culprit conveniently admits it as soon as Van Dusen proposes the solution. All he had to do was tell Van Dusen he was mistaken and stick to his story and there would have been no way to prove it. In this and several of these stories, Professor Van Dusen does not strike me as thinking things out logically--it is more like he guesses and those guesses naturally wind up being the solution--and the culprits all are so astounded that they confess. For instance, in one story, he reasons that a French servant naturally knows a French woman in the same building. And, of course, he loves her. And, of course since he loves her, they are really working together in an evil plot. And--of course, they were.

Given that much is made of the lost talent when Futrelle perished in the Titanic disaster, I had hoped for much a much stronger selection in a collection of the "best" stories. They are all interesting and give a nice picture of America in the early 20th Century, but I'm not sold on their overall brilliance. ★★★

"The Problem of Cell 13": Futrelle's most famous story. Professor Van Dusen insists that nothing is impossible to a thinking man. His friends wager that he can't think his way out of a prison cell...but he proceeds to do just that.

"The Crystal Gazer": A man apparently sees his own death forecast in a crystal ball. How was the image projected if it isn't truly psychic powers? And if it's really a prediction of the future can the professor change fate?

"The Scarlet Thread": Attempts are made on the life of Weldon Henley--using the gas in his apartment. The solution all hangs upon a scarlet thread found on a flagpole.

"The Flaming Phantom": Could the Weston family's passion for mirrors hold the explanation of the "haunting" of their old homestead? And what about the 50 year-old murder and the missing jewels?

"The Problem of the Stolen Rubens": Proving that the simplest way to steal something is to carry it out under the nose of its owner.

"The Missing Necklace": Van Dusen helps Scotland Yard discover where a stolen necklace of pearls has been sent in America.

"The Phantom Motor": A speeding car disappears on a road bordered by a stone wall on one side and a stone fence on the other. And the scientist uses a bicyclist to track the phantom motor.

"The Brown Coat": A bank robber manages to hide his takings (a little over $100,000) before the police catch up to him. He swears that the cops will never find it...they don't. But Professor Van Dusen does. [Just a side-note: I don't think he owes Detective Mallory a hat. The policeman didn't find the money's hiding place and wouldn't have without the professor's help.]

"His Perfect Alibi": A man is found stabbed to death, but apparently had time to write his killer's name before he died. The only problem? The named man has a perfect alibi.

"The Lost Radium": How did the radium get out of the laboratory? Only one door and the scientist in charge was right outside it when it disappeared.

"Kidnapped Baby Blake, Millionaire": The mystery of the toddler who walked into the snow and simply disappeared.

"The Fatal Cipher": Pomeroy Stockton is a wealthy inventor, looking to re-discover an ancient (long-since lost) method of hardening copper. When he is found dead in his laboratory with an odd letter, his step-daughter suspects foul play. She asks Van Dusen to investigate and he must decide if there has been foul play or not...and, if so, who is responsible?

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

These detective stories from the earliest years of the Twentieth Century are almost purely puzzle mysteries, with little plot or character development. In the vein of the later John Dickson Carr, Jacques Futrelle (1875-1912) constructs an "insoluble" mystery, and then pulls out all stops in having his detective create a vaguely plausible solution. The detective in question is the irascible Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, the "Thinking Machine," who has more degrees than a thermometer. He has a certain cranky Holmesian charm, and uses reporter Hutchinson Hatch as his leg man, much as Archie Goodwin serves for Nero Wolfe. This collection contains 12 stories: ten of the Thinking Machine's "best" as selected by editor E.F. Bleiler, and then two lost early stories as a bonus. Though Futrelle published just two story collections in his lifetime, apparently there are "almost fifty other stories" featuring the Thinking Machine. The Library of Congress Crime Classics series issued a collection of seven stories in 2023, three of which are also in this book. The first Thinking Machine story was published in 1905. Futrelle died seven years later in the Titanic disaster as he "pushed his wife into a lifeboat, but refused to get in himself and went down with the ship." These stories enthusiastically pose puzzles for the reader even as they sometimes strain credulity. [3½★]

[Ronn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been an avid mystery reader since my early teens, so I dont know how I managed to miss Jacques Futrelle for so long. I had never heard of him until maybe 10 years ago when I read a pastiche that involved Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic. Futrelle was a character in the book and in real life died on The Titanic. A few years later I found this book at an estate sale. Now having read it, I find Futrelle's scholar/detective to be almost as engaging as Holmes, if somewhat more curmudgeonly. There is apparently a lot more of his work available now, as opposed to the early 70s when this book came out. I look forward to reading them.

[William Bibliomane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Futrelle's cantankerous character is brought to life in this course of a dozen stories, highlighting the brave new world of the first decade of the 20th century, sometimes with surprising results. Unfortunately, what passed for novelty in 1905 doesn't always translate to interest in the 2010s.

Full review here: https://bibliomaneblog.wordpress.com/...

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Thinking Machine- Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, presented with a varying set of postnominals- is the detective protagonist of a series of short stories (and one novel) produced from 1905 to 1912 by American author Jacques Futrelle, whose career was cut short by his death on the Titanic. Immensely popular at the time, The Thinking Machine is now known pretty much exclusively to aficionados of early detective fiction, and even then primarily via "The Problem of Cell 13," the frequently-anthologized first Van Dusen story. This is the cream of the crop- 12 stories, a fourth or so of the Thinking Machine stories, selected by a sympathetic and reputable editor (E. F. Bleiler). The first ten stories are presented as Futrelle's best, and the last two are admittedly not as good, but included out of historical interest- they had not been previously reprinted.

The Thinking Machine himself is an indifferent-to-unpleasant character. He's deliberately prickly and standoffish, impatient of those whose thoughts move slower than his (which is everyone), and he's hard to like; the adverbs "irritably" and "tartly" are used in almost every story to describe his brusque comments to other characters. He has two sort-of catchphrases- "Dear me! Dear me!" and "Two and two make four- not sometimes, but all the time"- which eminently fail to humanize him or render him memorable as a persona. He has a sidekick, journalist Hutchinson Hatch; while Van Dusen isn't exactly an armchair detective of the Old Man in the Corner type, he relies on Hatch to do a lot of his legwork. There's no meaningful character development across the stories, and the characters exist in a static turn-of-the-century Boston. But that doesn't especially matter, because Van Dusen isn't really the star of the show here; these are sort of "pre-literary" puzzle stories, and the real star is the puzzles. Futrelle liked "impossible" setups which are then solved and explained totally rationally (there is the occasional shade of Scooby-Doo, especially in "The Flaming Phantom"); and at this he was, at least in the stories presented here, quite good- certainly as good as anybody else writing at the time. The first story, "The Problem of Cell 13," is genuinely deserving of its (minor) classic status; while aspects of it are now commonplace (the fate of all pioneers), its thorough, systematically imagined puzzle and solution are still very strong.

The stories can feel hastily-written or loosely constructed. Futrelle was churning these out for publication- he published 43 Thinking Machine stories, and one Thinking Machine novel (really a novella), in the space of about 25 months- and their relatively standardized lengths, and the way the longer stories are usually broken into near-even-length parts, also betray the utilitarian, paper-filling origins of the stories (the earlier stories are longer, as they were serialized over the course of a week each). They are, however, briskly readable- Futrelle knew how to tell a story, how to deploy light touches of humor, and how to keep the reader's interest, and these stories make for good entertainment, even if the Thinking Machine himself is kind of a nonentity, and even if they tend towards the slight and the "cute" by dint of their orientation towards their puzzles. I enjoyed all the stories in this collection to some extent while I was reading them, even if I have to acknowledge that they are not really great literature.

Bleiler compiled another volume of further Thinking Machine stories later, now out of print; but given that he selected the best for this collection, and given the quality of the two weaker stories included here ("Kidnapped Baby Blake, Millionaire" in particular has an atrocious solution- which is fatal, as the appeal of these stories is as ingenious puzzles), I'm not sure I'm particularly interested in it.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of vintage short stories goes back to 1905 when Jacques Futrelle created his "Thinking Machine" sleuth Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen who, along with reporter Hutchinson Hatch, defies the odds to solve some very unusual mysteries.

Edited and introduced by E.F.Bleiler, the twelve stories begin with The Problem of Cell 13, in which the Professor accepts a bet that he can escape from a prison cell.

The other stories are: The Crystal Gazer, The Scarlet Thread, The Flaming Phantom, The Problem of the Stolen Rubens, The Missing Necklace, The Phantom Motor, The Brown Coat, His Perfect Alibi, The Lost Radium, Kidnapped Baby Blake- Millionaire, and The Fatal Cipher.

Bear in mind that these stories are from another era, and yet they are still quite entertaining. Furthermore, the writer of short stories has the increased burden of developing the entire story in far fewer pages than for a novel. That is quite an accomplishment for any writer.

[Boweavil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great fun if a bit dated in style. Definitely worth it if you're a mystery buff.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up on a whim. I’m not an avid reader of mysteries – at least not in the Sherlock Holmes/Agatha Christie style. My tastes run toward a good, violent noir detective story. But when I saw this book at a used book sale for 50 cents, I figured it was worth a try.

The Thinking Machine is a memorable character, mostly for his brilliant disdain of others. The stories are often told backward – you know who did it or what happened, but you don’t know how.

A couple of the stories were clever, but overall they were not gripping. I was reading one story (The Flaming Phantom) – a ghost haunts a house where it’s rumored that jewels were hidden – and after a while it occurred to me this was a Scooby Doo plot. (“I would’a gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling Thinking Machine!”) In another story (The Brown Coat), I was hoping the Thinking Machine wouldn’t catch the bank robber. He was the most sympathetic character in the book. (Who sides with a bank anyway?)

If you are an inveterate mystery reader, I’m sure these are very good. For the casual reader, you could skip these without missing much.

[Chet Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting detective stories of a different time period by Jacques Futrelle, who most famously went down with the Titanic. Very reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and Alfred Hitchcock.

[Ronald · Rating 3 out of 5]

side note: author Futrelle died on the Titanic; read some time in 1990