The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason

By Melville Davisson Post

Subjects: American Legal stories, American Detective and mystery stories

Description: Melville Davisson Post created his famous character, Randolph Mason, in 1894. Mason was a highly skilled and unscrupulous lawyer who used the law to defeat the ends of justice. Of the stories in the collection, "The Corpus Delecti" is probably the most powerful as well as the most gruesome — and by far the most famous. When this story first appeared it had such a profound effect on the public that it resulted in widespread reforms of the old law of corpus delecti — it is no longer necessary to have to produce an actual corpse to prove that murder has been done. With this, his first book, Post firmly established his position as one of the great detective short story writers of all time. Generally, in these stories he showed the villain how to circumvent the law — but, at the same time, as he said, he also warned the friends of law and order.