In college I had Crime and Punishment as assigned reading both in Russian Literature and in Literature and Psychology. And I had read it on my own in high school.

The cliched observation is that Dostoyevsky spends the first quarter of the novel on the crime and the last three quarters on the punishment. I think Metallica does the same on Suicide and Redemption from Death Metallic. About a quarter of the song is hard hitting Suicide, and the other 3 quarters are the melodic and uplifting Redemption.

Has James read Fyodor?