The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece by Kevin Birmingham (Review)

By Timothy Sandefur

New York: Penguin, 2021
432 pages, $20.35 hardcover

Anyone who has read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment can testify to the spooky exactitude of the novelist’s psychological insight and the haunting ways in which his characters act on some of humanity’s worst motivations. Its protagonist, Rodyon Raskolnikov, is an immortal figure in wo…