Recommendations from our site
“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...
“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...
John Timoney, Miscellaneous
“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
