This very focused and highly readable story of a murder and its aftermath is riveting, with some exceptional scenes along the way. There is also a great deal of philosophizing and injection of religion by Dostoevsky, which may or may not sit well with individual readers, but in my opinion doesn't affect the grim pleasure of the story. There are great characters here, the murderer, who alternates between rejecting people and helping them; his mother and sister, always ready to sacrifice their own happiness for his; his friend (if only we all could have a friend like that); his sister's despicable suitor (actually two of them, both of whom Dostoevsky handles nicely), and, in fact, the city of Saint Petersburg itself. This is my third Dostoevsky novel. It is more concise and compelling, though much less funny, than the wonderful The Brothers Karamazov, and it is much much better than The Possessed, which I can hardly remember anything about, although I read it more recently. For the first half of Crime and Punishment, you could read it as a very black comedy, but it is hard to do the same with the last half. There is a lot to learn here about Russian pride and Russian psychology perhaps--not a bad thing to know about these days.

I read the Norton Critical Edition, and the notes were quite helpful, and they didn't overdo it. I mean that you don't get interrupted on every page reading an explanation of something that you probably already know, which would completely interrupt the pleasure of a book like this. I also read a couple of essays in the back, one of which did provide good insight into the rationale for the characters' actions. But reading them all wouldn't be that much fun. ( )