The Scientific Detectives: Van Dusen, Thorndyke

Watson once said of Holmes, "He was the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen." This is what American writer Jacques Futrelle -- an admirer of Doyle -- had in mind when he created Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen, "The Thinking Machine." Van Dusen is brilliant but brusque and unfriendly toward associates, and toward the reader. All his cases are short stories. The first collection appeared in 1907, named for the title story that first appeared in 1905, "The Problem of Cell 13," his best known work. You can read it here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0603601h.html

Talk about a 'locked room" mystery--the title story challenges the prof to escape from a prison that is inescapable. Like other examples of the period, an admiring journalist is the narrator.

Futrelle was a journalist himself, in Atlanta, New York and Boston, before he left to write fiction full time. He perished in the sinking of the Titanic, after forcing his wife into a lifeboat and staying behind, smoking a cigarette on deck.

The best example of the 'scientific' detective is Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke. Like Doyle, Freeman modeled Thorndyke after a medical school instructor. Unlike Holmes, who has a veneer of scientific inquiry, Thorndyke carries a portable lab with him and conducts tests, explained in detail. Freeman tried all the experiments himself to make sure they would work. The police actually adopted some of his experiments and tests. Thorndyke extends the detective's senses, enhancing human observation with microscopes.

Thorndyke has lab assistants -- Watsons, sort of -- named Jervis and Polton, who are devoted and smart but, like Watson, not as smart as the main man. 

Freeman attempted to solve one of mystery writing's mysteries: how to get beyond the tiresome technique of plot construction whereby the story stops dead (ha!) to explain the events leading up to the crime. Doyle stumbled terribly on this annoying point, spending large chunks of his novels providing the 'backstory', especially in 'A Study in Scarlet' and 'Sign of Four'. Gaboriau tried to avoid the break in continuity without success.

So Freeman started the story earlier, with the criminal-to-be contemplating his crime. Then we follow the events leading up to the murder. Finally, Thorndyke joins the case, but now the reader knows more than the detective and the attention is focused on the process of detection, not what is detected. "Columbo" followed this inverted formula in the 1970s, where we see a cultured, intelligent upper-class person commit murder, and then we wait to see how a rumpled middle-class cop will solve it and humble the haughty, much to the delight of middle-class viewers.

But Thorndyke is not a cop. He is a cultured amateur and so are the other characters, including the criminals. Thus, detective fiction moved completely away from 'sensation.' In a way, Freeman married the gentleman-crook tradition to the emerging 'scientific amateur detective' form.

This emphasis on science tied into the public's fascination with the new age of invention: radio waves, electricity, aeroplanes, and transAtlantic airships. Strides were made in scientific criminology, too: chemical tests to distinguish animal bloodstains from human stains were developed (would Holmes leap for joy, as at the beginning of "Scarlet"?). Fingerprinting became accepted (Holmes dismissed this). But villains, too, kept up, killing victims with electricity, exotic poisons, and x-rays.

Science fiction was also popular, but it tended to be gloomy (consider HG Wells' "Time Machine" where the earth becomes barren and populated by primitive crabs. The George Pal-directed movie in the 1960s had a Kennedy-era hopeful end). Scientific detectives, on the other hand, put an optimistic spin on science and progress. But it is not surprising that 'scientific' detectives disappeared after World War I, which showed everyone what science and modern technology could do: murder people in horribly large numbers impersonally.