Randolph Mason, the Devil's Advocate

Randolph Mason is a brusque New York lawyer who is highly skilled at turning legal loopholes and technicalities to his clients'' advantage. He is depicted as an utterly amoral character who advises criminals how to commit wrongdoings without breaking the letter of the law. The best-known of these stories is "The Corpus Delicti", in which Mason''s client murders a blackmailing lover and dissolves her dismembered corpse in acid. Despite circumstantial evidence, Mason secures his client''s acquittal on the grounds that nobody has been found and there are no eyewitnesses to the woman''s death, as required by New York law at the time. Post deflected criticism of such sensational stories by affirming that he was publicly exposing weaknesses in the law that needed to be rectified. Melville Davisson Post (1869-1930) was an American author, born in West Virginia. Table of Contents: ΓÇó The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason ΓÇó The Corpus Delicti ΓÇó Two Plungers of Manhattan ΓÇó Woodford''s Partner ΓÇó The Error of William Van Broom ΓÇó The Men of the Jimmy ΓÇó The Sheriff of Gullmore ΓÇó The Animus Furandi ΓÇó The Man of Last Resort (The Clients of Randolph Mason) ΓÇó The Governor''s Machine ΓÇó Mrs. Van Barton ΓÇó Once in Jeopardy ΓÇó The Grazier ΓÇó The Rule Against Carper