Crime and Punishment

“There was a real murder in Moscow in 1865, two elderly women killed by axe. Dostoyevsky was deeply moved by this crime. When a writer is deeply moved, he writes a novel. When it is a great writer, the story turns out to be a great novel. Crime and Punishment is on my list because I wrote my own version of the events. In a novel called F.M. (Dostoyevsky’s initials, Fyodor Mikhailovich) I introduce a newly discovered manuscript by Dostoevsky, a first version of Crime and Punishment, and it is a 100% mystery about a serial killer.” Read more...

Five Mysteries Set in Russia

Boris Akunin, Thriller and Crime Writer

“Crime and Punishment is probably Dostoevsky’s most conventional novel. It’s effectively a sort of literary crime novel, and is in some ways quite typical of its time. It’s got a fascinating structure, where a full 80% of the novel comes after he’s committed the crime but before he reaches the punishment. So for the majority novel, you are in suspense and, despite the title, a part of you genuinely believes he might get away with it.” Read more...

The Best Fyodor Dostoevsky Books

Alex Christofi, Literary Scholar

“It is not a crime book in the way that we understand crime fiction today. Instead it is like an existential psychological thriller.” Read more...

Irvine Welsh recommends the best Crime Novels

Irvine Welsh, Thriller and Crime Writer

“The second time I read it was at a monthly police officers’ reading club where we’d get together and discuss a book over beer and pizza, and that time it struck me as funny and somewhat naive that a cold-blooded killer’s pangs of conscience lead him to confess.” Read more...

The best books on Policing

John Timoney, Policemen

“I think Dostoevsky understood psychological and social contradictions in life to a peak of intensity later writers have seldom been able to match.” Read more...

The best books on Totalitarian Russia

Robert Service, Historian