Porfiry Petrovich (no family name) is the principal investigator of a double murder. He is speaking to Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov:
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, translated by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Books, 2021).
At the 278-page mark, this novel just became interesting in a new way. Elaine and I, independent of each another, each wrote Columbo in our margins. So I’m happy to see that Lieutenant Columbo’s creators, Richard Levinson and William Link, named Porfiry Petrovich as a model for their character. Some years back, I thought that the little detective in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques had something to do with the character of Columbo. And I still think that Dickens’s Inspector Bucket, with his invisible wife and missing first name, is in there somewhere.
Two related posts
Columbo’s notebook : Separated at birth: Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, William Hopper
[Re Columbo’s first name, see here.]
Monday, November 21, 2022
A source for Columbo
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
comments: 2
That's wild! I sent it to Marz, who loves Columbo.
She also loved The Brothers Karamazov, but said it didn't really catch her until page 700...
I think it’s a trick to keep the reader engaged. “It’s bound to get better ... soon?”
Post a Comment