The Problem of Cell 13

In 1905, a diminutive scientist with an ego the size of Manhattan accepts a wager: escape from Chisholm Prison's Cell 13, the most escape-proof death row cell in America. No tools. No help. Just his mind against the walls. Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, known to the world as "The Thinking Machine", is the kind of genius who believes two and two make four not sometimes, but all the time. When the warden and skeptical scientists watch through the peephole, they expect to see a man defeat by stone and iron. Instead, they witness a beautiful, maddening demonstration of pure reason: the scientist observes everything (the rats, the stone, the shadows of evening), asks absurd questions, and then simply... escapes. Jacques Futrelle's twenty-three tales established the template for every armchair detective who followed. These are puzzles dressed as crimes, where the weapon isn't a gun but a mind that refuses to accept the impossible. For readers who believe the greatest magic is logic.