Azazel (a conspiratorial detective novel) is Boris Akunin’s book, written in 1998, the first novel in the series about the extraordinary detective Erast Fandorin.
The story takes place in 1876. Erast Petrovich Fandorin is lucky, fearless, noble, and—most importantly—only twenty years old. But above all, he is a born detective. Young Erast Petrovich serves in the police department as a clerk—but by duty, he comes across a tangled case. He begins investigating.
A strange suicide of a student, the heir to a large fortune, leads Fandorin to a certain major underground organization in which very influential people are involved. This book became the first in the series of exciting detective adventures about the detective Erast Fandorin.