ONE MORE THING:

As unlikely as it might seem for a Russian author who composed long books about big ideas, Dostoevsky has had a significant effect on American culture. Dostoevsky, whose life and work is being celebrated internationally this fall on the 200th anniversary of his birth, has influenced the novels of African American writers such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, as well as the films of Woody Allen.

Perhaps his most surprising influence has been on mainstream American TV, and specifically the popular detective series Columbo, starring Peter Falk--a series whose heyday was 1971-1978 but which ran on and off from 1968-2003. The creators of the Columbo character, playwrights William Link and Richard Levinson, were fans of the book and especially of the character Porfiry, the lead detective in the investigation of the murder committed by Raskolnikov. A seemingly bumbling but actually brilliant investigator, Porfiry uses indirection and surprise to keep the suspect off balance. From Dostoevsky's novel the creators of Columbo took not only their lead character but also the show's basic plot structure. Instead of beginning with a victim and then devoting the rest of the plot to the investigator's attempt to identify the criminal, the audience knows from the beginning who the criminal is. The drama concerns the investigative methods deployed to trap the culprit. Like Crime and Punishment, Columbo is not a "whodunnit" but a "howcatchem."

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