Crime and Punishment to coerce him to confess. The novel is divided into six parts, with an epilogue. The notion of "intrinsic duality" in "Crime and Punishment" has been commented upon, with the suggestion that there is a degree of symmetry to the book. Edward Wasiolek who has argued that Dostoevsky was a skilled craftsman, highly conscious of the formal pattern in his art, has likened the structure of "Crime and Punishment" to a "flattened X", saying: This compositional balance is achieved by means of the symmetrical distribution of certain key episodes throughout the novel's six parts. The recurrence of these episodes in
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