There were times while reading the rationalizations/thought processes of the main character that I started to feel physically nauseous and had to take a break.
If you are at all interested in psychology, sociology, history, and/or philosophy, give it (or the audiobook) a go.
A great, disturbingly accurate, representation of what happens when loneliness starts to eat away at a person's mind.
I just finished reading Crossroads, a new novel by Franzen. There are some similarities you might like. No murder, but Franzen has gotten quite good at inhabiting the mind of unsteady, sometimes unwell characters.
I do agree that we make a "Great Man" to be much more than they are: that the achievements we ascribe to them would be impossible without support, work, and desire by a great number of people for the thing the leader wants to do, and that this leader can't unilaterally substantially change the course of history without immense support.
Where I disagree is the idea that that person is completely inconsequential; that a similar person would rise just the same, given the circumstances of the time, and that the results would be of no difference.
I'm open to the idea that Tolstoy was just taking an absolutist approach as a method of rhetoric and that he didn't actually believe that leaders have no consequence.