Suppose you were locked into one of the most secure prisons in America around 1900; put into solitary confinement, with periodical inspections by the warden, who knew for a fact (you had told him) that you would escape in less than a week. How would you communicate with the outside, how would you smuggle in tools and weapons, and how would you finally escape in a dazzlingly logical way?

This was the situation that confronted Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, The Thinking Machine, in "The Problem of Cell 13," one of the most famous mystery stories ever written. Eventually The Thinking Machine did escape, and his method is known to generations of fans, who have delighted in this favorite story.

Not so well known, however, is the fact that Jacques Futrelle wrote many more stories about this unusual detective. In this volume the editor has selected the ten best stories about The Thinking Machine, adventures that concern 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. Since by almost everyone's criteria, The Thinking Machine stories are the most important American detective stories between Poe and the moderns, this is an indispensable volume for everyone who delights in a mystery.

Twelve stories. Original (1973) publication. Selected with an introduction by E. F. Bleiler.