It is similar in structure to his more famous The Threepenny Opera and features several of the same characters such as Macheath, together with a general anti-capitalist focus and a didactic technique that is often associated with the dramatist.

It can be seen alternatively as a careful development of the detective novel genre and as scathing criticism of the social conditions and the economic practices of German businesses and banks in the middle of the 20th century.

In the novel, Benjamin observes that "Brecht draws epochs together and billets his gangster type in London that has the rhythm and appearance of the age of Dickens.

The novel is set in London at the turn of the 20th century and its plot focuses on the machinations and developments of finance capital, something that is often considered to be unusual for Brecht as his work is traditionally viewed as being more concerned with conditions of industrial production.

Brecht employs a series of complex plot twists and turns in order to demonstrate Macheath's rise to power and to show the way in which he is able to do this often with legal sanction.

At one key point in the novel this is shown as Macheath reminisces nostalgically about his previous life as a gangster and states that he wishes that he could return to these conditions in which conflict and violence could be carried out openly instead of being hidden behind bureaucracy.

[2] Historically the novel can be seen as an important marker of Brecht's friendship with Walter Benjamin, whose review of the novel contains early formulations of his own theories of history and of a Marxist understanding of aesthetics.