The Man of Last Resort & The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason

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:

The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason

The Corpus Delicti

Two Plungers of Manhattan

Woodford's Partner

The Error of William Van Broom

The Men of the Jimmy

The Sheriff of Gullmore

The Animus Furandi

The Man of Last Resort (The Clients of Randolph Mason)

The Governor's Machine

Mrs. Van Barton

Once in Jeopardy

The Grazier

The Rule Against Carper