Azazel

"Azazel" is the first novel in the series about the extraordinary detective Erast Fandorin.
The action of the novel begins in May 1876 in Moscow. A young wealthy man Kokorin commits suicide under strange circumstances. The incident is investigated by a... twenty-year-old clerk of the police department, college registrar Erast Petrovich Fandorin. He is poor and inexperienced, but observant, insightful, nimble, decent, handsome, and extraordinarily lucky.

Fandorin discovers that Kokorin bequeathed his fortune to a philanthropist - the Englishwoman Baroness Lady Esther, and finds people connected to the suicide: Kokorin's acquaintance - another young wealthy man Akhtrytsev, as well as the fatal woman Amaliya Bezhetskaya. Bezhetskaya regularly gathers her admirers, including Akhtrytsev and the swordsman Count Hippolyte Zurov.
Akhtrytsev tells Fandorin that Kokorin's suicide is the result of a peculiar "duel" between the two of them for Bezhetskaya's favor.
After that, someone kills Akhtrytsev and wounds Fandorin