Crime and Punishment a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds; but afterwards he finds himself racked with confusion, paranoia, and disgust for what he has done. His moral justifications disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror, and confronts the real world consequences of his deed. Dostoevsky conceived the idea of "Crime and Punishment", prompted by the case of Pierre François Lacenaire, in the summer of 1865. He had been working on another project at the time
Crime and Human Nature of crime. Writing in "The New York Times", John Kaplan wrote in his review of "Crime and Human Nature" that "there is no doubt that this is an important book and will be the starting place for discussions of the subject for years to come." In a more mixed review of the book, Susan Jaco wrote that "The authors' point of view is buried amid so many tedious studies – many of which could just as easily be summed up in aphorisms like "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" – that it is difficult to discern their real