“Columbo” shows the benefits of asking just one more thing
However powerful the villain, the scruffy detective always outwits them
IN “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT” Raskolnikov, the murderer and anti-hero, is tormented by a detective. Porfiry Petrovich seems to know Raskolnikov is guilty from the start and keeps reappearing in the hope of provoking a confession. Richard Levinson and William Link, two American screenwriters, had studied Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s great novel at university and drew on the figure of Porfiry when creating an investigator of their own.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Avenger in a raincoat”
Culture February 12th 2022
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- Rachel Jones is an artist of the moment
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- “Columbo” shows the benefits of asking just one more thing
- A language without a flag and a state is still a language
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