Crime and Punishment the two halves of the novel, as David Bethea has argued, is organized according to a mirror-like principle, whereby the "left" half of the novel reflects the "right" half. The seventh part of the novel, the Epilogue, has attracted much attention and controversy. Some of Dostoevsky's critics have criticized the novel's final pages as superfluous, anti-climactic, unworthy of the rest of the work, while others have defended it, offering various schemes that they claim prove its inevitability and necessity. Steven Cassedy argues that "Crime and Punishment" "is formally two distinct but closely related, things, namely a particular type of tragedy
Underworld London: Crime and Punishment in the Capital City favours the highwayman: her pen-portraits sparkle with the notoriety and swagger of these romantic figures.' The Historical Novel Society also praised the work, writing 'the author collates a variety of secondary sources in a readable and pacy narrative' and whilst also noting 'Arnold makes a strong case to show why capital punishment should remain off the statute books and if there is anything positive to take away from this catalogue of human iniquity, it is that the more enlightened recent attitudes towards the punishment of serious crime has to be a good thing'. The book was also reviewed in the