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 begins to be investigated... by a twenty-year-old clerk of the police department, collegiate registrar Erast Petrovich Fandorin. He is poor and inexperienced but observant, insightful, clever, honest, handsome, and extremely lucky.

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