The Thinking Machine

This entertaining short story collection features Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, nicknamed "The Thinking Machine"―a brilliant but abrasive scientist who proves time and again that any puzzle can be solved by the application of logic.

Could you beat the world chess master in one try if you'd never played or studied the game? Or plot and execute a successful escape from an inescapable prison cell? And could you do it at the turn of the twentieth century, without benefit of modern technology? Sound impossible?

Never use that word in the presence of The Thinking Machine―it angers him greatly and does not give him a favorable impression of the user. Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen knows that both feats are indeed possible, having accomplished them himself. But he also applies his superior intellect and deductive reasoning to more official ends―namely helping the police solve "impossible" crimes.

With assistance from reporter Hutchinson Hatch, who is only too happy to suggest potential cases and then write about the outcome, The Thinking Machine proves that no puzzle is unsolvable―not corporate espionage, nor a kidnapped baby, nor a pilfered necklace, And certainly not a "perfect murder."

LESLIE S. KLINGER is the two-time Edgar® winning editor of New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s. He has also edited two anthologies of classic mysteries and, with Laurie R. King, five anthologies of stories inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Klinger is the series editor of Library of Congress Crime Classics, a partnership of the Library of Congress and Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks. He is a former Chapter President of the SoCal Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and lives in Malibu, California.