The problem of Cell 13 – Annotated Edition by Jacques Futrelle

Description

The Problem of Cell 13 is an annotated DodaBooks edition of Jacques Futrelle’s classic detective collection, first published in 1907.

The seven stories follow Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen — “The Thinking Machine” — a Harvard professor and logician who believes nothing is impossible when the human mind is properly applied. From the titular challenge of escaping a sealed prison cell within a week, to bank burglaries, phantom fires, and mysterious disappearances, each story presents an apparently insoluble puzzle that Van Dusen unravels through pure deduction.

Written in the golden age of American mystery fiction, Futrelle’s tales anticipate the methods of Sherlock Holmes while grounding their solutions in scientific reasoning rather than instinct.

This edition preserves the original texts with inline DodaBooks annotations that illuminate narrative structure, logical methods, and the conventions of early twentieth-century detective fiction as the reader progresses through each story.