I saw Titanic on television the other night. While I’m not a big fan of the movie (watching hundreds of people drown for entertainment is not my thing) it always has one effect on me: always go to my bookcases and pull out my copy of Jacques Futrelle’s Thinking Machine tales.

Futrelle was a journalist and short story writer who was returning from Europe in 1912, when he and his wife decided to sail on the Titanic.

Futrelle’s most popular creation was the Thinking Machine, a scientist-sleuth who felt that the mind could conquer all. Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D.,LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., M. D. S., to give his full name and most letters in the alphabet, was one of the sleuths of the early 1900s who seemed to know everything.

The Thinking Machine’s most celebrated case - and one of the best “locked room” mysteries ever written - is “The Problem of Cell 13.” In it, the Professor accepts a wager to escape from a seemingly impregnable prison cell on death row using nothing but his wits. Needles to say, the Thinking Machine triumphs.

Sadly, the mind could not conquer the icy North Atlantic on that April night. Futrelle secured his wife a seat in one of the few lifeboats; Futrelle and a new batch of Thinking Machine stories went down with the ship.

Jeffrey Marks is an award-winning biographer and novelist as well as a Contributing Editor to Mystery Scene. His newest book, Anthony Boucher: A Bio-bibliography, is a biography of the noted mystery writer, critic and editor. (McFarland, 2008). www.jeffreymarks.com

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