The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

MELVILLE DAVISSON POST (1869-1930)

Melville Davisson Post's two series characters, who earned their author wide popular acclaim in his day, are a study in contrasts. The antihero in his first book of crime stories and two later anthologies is Randolph Mason, an unscrupulous lawyer who expertly levers his criminal clients through legal loopholes. Mason's opposite is the scrupulous, Bible-quoting moralist Uncle Abner, whose efforts at uncovering crime in the hearts and actions of backwoods Virginians establish not only man's justice but God's.

Both of Post's characters are larger-than-life figures who use their different expertise to amaze their clients and Post's readers alike. Mason's legal expertise comes from his creator's own experience of the law. Post practiced criminal and corporate law for eleven years before becoming involved in Democratic politics. Criticised for allowing Mason to use the law to help criminals, Post wrote, "Nothing but good can come of exposing the law's defects." Some changes in criminal codes were actually made in response to Mason stories.

Abner was Post's answer to the lawlessness of the mountain men whom he knew intimately. Born in Romines Mills, West Virginia, Post was raised in the wild hills that he depicted in the Abner stories. His highly successful regional writing is considered to be an early influence leading to the blossoming of regionalism in American detective fiction.

Even critics who have not been enthusiastic about the literary quality of his work acknowledge Post's skill at plotting. They concede, along with Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler in their «Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection,» that he did much to speed up the pace of the detective story "by developing the mystery and its solution simultaneously."

A great commercial success as a magazine writer, the versatile and confident Post also dared to create a British sleuth, Sir Henry Marquis, chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, whose work takes him to international locales, including Asia and the United States. Another character, Walker of the Secret Service, had robbed trains until he reformed and became a federal agent. Post ventured into Paris with Monsieur Jonquelle, Prefect of Police of Paris, and returned to the Virginia hills with his gentleman lawyer, Colonel Braxton.

Loaded with biblical allusions and quotations, «The Doomdorf Mystery» exemplifies the Abner stories. The final line is an Abner classic.