Although they were seen as a "low genre" by the communist officials, both local (such as Igor (Georgy) Vayner and Julian Semenov), and foreign detective novels have always been avidly coveted.

[6][7] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many trashy detective novels were published that featured a lot of gore and sex.

[12] He set out to write a cycle about Fandorin with an exploration of every subgenre of the detective novel in mind, from spies to serial killers.

He uses the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire as background for the novel The Turkish Gambit; the death of the "White General" Mikhail Skobelev (as 'Mikhail Sobolev') in The Death of Achilles; and the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and the Khodynka Tragedy for Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs.

Akunin uses the gaps in the knowledge of these histories to create an atmosphere for his mystery novels to which readers can relate.