Inside the story
Meet Porfiry Petrovitch
Porfiry Petrovitch is the shrewd examining magistrate who heads the Investigation Department in St. Petersburg. When he takes an interest in Raskolnikov, he has no hard proof, but uses careful conversation and psychological pressure to probe the young student and draw him toward a confession.
On the page
A man of about five and thirty, short and stout even to corpulence, clean-shaven with hair cut short over a large round head prominent at the back; his soft, round, rather snub-nosed face of a sickly dark-yellow colour, with a vigorous, ironical expression.
