THE THINKING MACHINE ON THE CASE. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1908. Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v [vi] [1] 2-337 [338: blank] [339-344: ads] [345-346: blank], inserted frontispiece with illustration by The Kinneys, original orange cloth, front panel stamped in white and black, spine panel stamped in white. First edition, first printing with code "(1)" on page 337. "Nearly all THE THINKING MACHINE stories ... will stand rereading today ... Had Jacques Futrelle lived beyond his thirty-seventh year, he might well have become one of the two or three leading names in the development of the American detective story. As it was, he brought to the genre a lightness of touch in advance of his time, and even by present-day standards his plots are still artful and his narratives readable." - Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure, pp. 86-7. The second, last and scarcest collection of "Thinking Machine" stories. See Queen's Quorum 38. Queen, The Detective Short Story, p. 45. Barzun and Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime (1989) 1391. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 F-486. Hubin (1994), p. 310. Slight spine lean, cloth rubbing at spine ends and corner tips, some general dust soiling to cloth, mostly spine panel, fragile white spine lettering mostly gone, a good copy. (#159745).
Price: $450.00
First printing has code "(1)" on page 337.