5 stars
First Sentence: Towards the end of a sultry afternoon early in July a young man came out of his little room in Stolyarny Lane and turned slowly and somewhat irresolutely in the direction of Kamenny Bridge.
Thoughts: I’ve been rewatching Columbo lately, which inspired me to reread Crime and Punishment. Also I’m currently on a Dostoevsky Quest. But it was Columbo that made me push this novel to the top of the list because Police Inspector Porfiry Petrovich was one of the inspirations for our good lieutenant. They were both rumpled, unprepossessing men who intruded on their subjects’ personal space, and both expert psychologists who never missed a trick. They both know you did the crime, they’re just annoying you until they get enough evidence to bring you downtown.
Even the structure of the book is like a Columbo episode. They all started off with the murder being committed* and the rest of the story was just gathering evidence and wearing down the suspect until the confession and/or final confrontation with the evidence that clinches their fate. Both the book and the show are how catch’em rather than whodunits. The difference, though, is that Crime and Punishment is about the criminal himself and how he feels while he’s being worn down enough to confess.
The criminal is Rodion Raskolnikov, a university dropout who’s obsessed with Napoleon. He believed that Great Men like Napoleon could commit crimes with impunity because they were improving society. From the beginning it’s clear that Raskolnikov’s cheese and cracker are not in close proximity. He decides to kill an old pawnbroker because she’s preying on the poor. He pawns a couple of items with her to case her apartment and find out where she keeps her money. When he hears her sister will be out for the evening, he takes his chance. Raskolnikov comes in pretending to pawn another item only to bludgeon the old woman with an axe. While he’s rummaging around in her pawn chest, he hears her sister come home. Sister is the next to get bludgeoned with the axe. He has a close call when two other men come up with items to pawn, but he gets away without being seen along with the axe and what little loot he could gather.
From then on Raskolnikov is constantly tormented by his conscience and/or everyone he knows. He works himself into a fever after he hides the loot in a vacant lot. In a fit of delirium he actually confesses to a police officer, but no one’s sure if it’s a real confession or if it’s just the fever talking. When his best friend invites him to a party he meets Porfiry Petrovich who immediately suspects him of the murder. Eventually he gets enough evidence to call Raskolnikov into his office and tell him he knows he’s the killer and it would be better if he made a formal confession.
Meanwhile Raskolnikov’s mother and sister Dunya move to St. Petersburg for his sister’s wedding. Raskolnikov meets his intended brother-in-law and it’s hate at first sight. He knows this man is a cad and a bounder who’s only marrying Dunya so he can have someone to boss around. He also befriends Marmeladov, a down-on-his luck civil service officer, and through him Marmeladov’s daughter Sonya, a hooker with a heart of gold. Sonya is the only person who has any influence on Raskolnikov, but he’s made such a mess of his life even she may not be able to save him.
*The good ones anyway. There are a few that break the mold but those are generally considered the episodes we do not speak of.
The Eclectic Reviewer 