The Problem of Cell 13 & Other Stories: "Suppose you were locked in such a cell. Could you escape?"

Jacques Heath Futrelle was born on the 9th April 1875 in Pike County, Georgia.

His early career was as a journalist. Initially he worked for the Atlanta Journal where he began their sports section. This was followed by work for the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American. At the latter, in 1905, he published the serialized version of his short story ‘The Problem of Cell 13’ who’s main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, commonly known as ‘The Thinking Machine’, a detective, who used logic to solve crimes.

In 1895 he married Lily May Peel with whom he had two children.

In 1906 buoyed by the success of his short stories he left the paper to write novels. Such was his success that he had a house, ‘Stepping Stones’, designed and built with a harbor view at Scituate, Massachusetts, where the family would spend most of their time together.

On April 15th, 1912 he was returning from Europe as a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic when it stuck an iceberg. He refused to board a lifeboat but insisted that Lily did. She acquiesced and remembered the last she saw of him he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. His body was never recovered.

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