Frank McCourt, Crime and Punishment, and the American way of detection.

All hail the late—and great—Frank McCourt:

"There's nothing to do but go back to my room, listen to the radio, read [Dostoevsky's] Crime and Punishment and fall asleep wondering why Russians have to drag things out. You'd never find a New York detective wandering around with the likes of Raskolnikov talking about everything but the murder of the old woman. The New York detective would nab him, book him and the next thing is the electric chair in Sing Sing, and that's because Americans are busy people with no time for detectives to be chatting with people they already know committed the murder."

—Frank McCourt, Tis: A Memoir 60–61