Publisher's Synopsis
"Mr. Crawford's technique becomes, if anything, more refined with each new work that he puts forth, but his substance grows thinner than ever. A forced mechanical invention marks the plot of 'Whosoever Shall Offend, ' and the characters are but slightly modified variations of the types that he has been fashioning for the past score of years. The new novel is concerned with a polished villain, who murders his wife and seeks to murder his stepson, all with the sordid object of gaining their fortune for himself, and in the end is trapped and punished according to his deserts. it is all very cleverly managed." -Dial.
It is a well-written, highly interesting melodrama.... The characters are all good types, the plot is strong, and the Italian atmosphere tempers the sensational occurrences to the colder northern imagination" -Critic.
"In this last novel Crawford is at his best. He writes with the charm and the originality of a man at the full tide of his powers." -Independent
"The story is ingenious, the sketches of scenery and peasantry admirable, the comments by the way philosophic and thoughtful; the English, of course, of the best-regulated. The reader for the most part, however, remains outside." -Nation.
"Notwithstanding its horrors, and partly on account of them, 'Whosoever shall offend' is simply an agreeable and diverting story, the work of an accomplished writer, who always turns out his creations in graceful form and who has established the right to be called the 'Norris' of American fiction." -Reader.
"His theme, as in not a few of his earlier books, is a particularly gruesome and mysterious crime. He appears to tell the story not for the sake of its sensational elements, however, but for the sake of character and social analysis. Contains a fascinating story, a puzzling mystery and its solution, elements in a book which, if well handled, as here, have never yet been known to fail of their effect." -Review of Reviews.