The Thinking Machine: Jacques Futrelle

Review: The Thinking Machine: Jacques Futrelle by Freddie Seymour and Bettina Kyper is, surprisingly, the first biography of a very important writer of detective stories. This American author, a great admirer of Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, created one of the most purely cerebral of all sleuths, Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, dubbed ‘The Thinking Machine’.

Futrelle’s astonishing ingenuity and logical creativity pitted the professor against all manner of extraordinary problems. (A classic is the case of the elegant woman who instructed a surgeon to amputate one of her - perfectly healthy - fingers. Only the Thinking Machine can deduce her sinister reason.)

Between 1905 and 1912, he wrote 48 short stories and seven novels. The stories are witty, challenging and stimulating. A complete edition is long overdue; fortunately this book includes five of the best as a bonus, among them the professor’s first appearance in The Problem of Cell 13, in which he makes good his bet that he can think himself out of the condemned cell of a prison.

The Thinking Machine: Jacques Futrelle isn’t a deep and scholarly biography; rather it’s an affectionate sketch of a charming and intelligent man, who died long before his time when the R.M.S. Titanic went down in 1912.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 177, 1998]