Within the Law

Within the Law is a novel adapted from the 1912 Broadway play of the same name by American playwright Bayard Veiller, novelized by the author Marvin Dana and published in 1913. The story centers on a young woman, Mary Turner, who is falsely accused of theft and sentenced to three years in prison without an adequate chance to defend herself. During those three years of wrongful punishment she comes to resent the unjust judicial system and society, and after her release she resolves to take revenge—by "legal" means—on the department-store magnate who sent her to prison. Every step she carefully designs falls within the cracks of the letter of the law, leaving others unable to catch her. The police and her old enemy try to set a trap to bring her to justice; the plot drives toward her being accused once more, with almost no way to prove her innocence, until the truth is revealed at the last moment. The novel preserves the tight dialogue rhythms and strong dramatic conflicts of the stage play, exploring whether "law-abiding revenge is still a crime" and whether the poor are equal before the law. It is a representative work of early twentieth-century American popular literature and courtroom-crime fiction, and the story has since been adapted into films several times.