It’s been said about Bernard Madoff that he wanted to be caught. That knowledge of the extent of his crimes was its own burden, one relieved by those same crimes being exposed. It was impossible not to think of Madoff while reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s very sad, frequently insightful, and ultimately unputdownable classic, Crime and Punishment.
Early on in what from now on will be referred to as Crime, central character Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov commits two murders. Eager to change his and his family’s bleak financial circumstances ahead of resuming university and what he imagines will be the life of an academic, Raskolnikov murders an old female pawnbroker in pre-meditated fashion only for Alyona Ivanovna’s half-sister to arrive on the scene. He then kills her too before escaping undetected. Or was he undetected?
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