The only other Dostoevsky book I know well enough to compare it to is Crime and Punishment, which I last read about 3.5 years ago. The biggest similarity is the presence of a mystery and some sort of forensic investigation. In both cases, the police spend a lot of time asking questions, finding clues and doing the 19th century equivalent of modern police work.
Crime and Punishment was written 5 years after The Brothers Karamazov. It appears in that time Dostoevsky changed his assessment fo police work a bit, as the detectives are a bit bungling in The Brothers Karamazov, following only material leads and making only the simplest psychological guesses, where as in Crime and Punishment the detective's focus is primarily on the psychology of the crime. This also may be seen as a contrast between city and country police forces, as Crime and Punishment was set in St. Petersburg, where The Brothers Karamazov was set in a small town. But the representatives of the big city---the doctors and lawyer---do not fair well in The Brothers Karamazov, so this seems to speak more in a change of Dostoevsky's thinking, rather than a consistent evaluation of the innate competence of city versus country folk.
As far as the characters go, the most interesting to me was Ivan. Mitya was a bit over-the-top in terms of his passion and behavior. While believable especially in his reaction to being arrested, I found his inability to stay focused one goal infuriating. That he couldn't bring himself to go to Katya and have her take mercy on him despite the fact that he did trust her was more proof that he had, through his own short-sightedness, put himself in a position he did not and could not understand.
Alyosha, while the most sincere and patient of the brothers, was in no way a participant in the story. His actions were most involved when he was a messenger. His reason for being in the story seemed to be mostly as the observer and as a point of comparison---the purest and most confident in the belief of his brother's innocence.
Ivan, on-the-other-hand, seemed caught between the two brothers (quite literally as teh middle brother as well...). He wrestled most openly with his brother's arrest and possible guilt. He did the footwork to try to understand what had happened and the role Smerdyakov played in the death of his father. he was the only one who was able to put together all the pieces and arrive at the true conclusion.
The way Dostoevsky plotted the mystery was very good. I liked how we didn't quite know the whole truth until Ivan did. Though the reader could put much of it together as the plot advanced,t he entire story wasn't clear until Ivan arrived at the same conclusions the reader had reached.
A good read.
9/10
