Crime and Punishment to recognize the symbolic possibilities of city life and imagery drawn from the city. I. F. I. Evnin regards "Crime and Punishment" as the first great Russian novel "in which the climactic moments of the action are played out in dirty taverns, on the street, in the sordid back rooms of the poor". Dostoevsky's Petersburg is the city of unrelieved poverty; "magnificence has no place in it, because magnificence is external, formal abstract, cold". Dostoevsky connects the city's problems to Raskolnikov's thoughts and subsequent actions. The crowded streets and squares, the shabby houses and taverns, the noise and stench, all
The Color of Crime (1998 book) as a path-breaking book". An edition of the "American Journal of Sociology" states that Russell-Brown makes an "indispensable, intelligent, and practical contribution" to the issues of race and crime. Erica Chito Childs in "Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture" (2009) writes that the book provides an excellent analysis of the media reaction in the O. J. Simpson murder case. However, Russell-Brown, who is African-American, and the book have been criticised for being biased. Critics have said the book downplays the level of black crime and that it over-attributes black crime to a discriminatory justice system. The