Fandorin is not the only person to have connected the suicides and the group: a newspaper reporter, Zhemailo, has also done so and he also dies a mysterious death.

These turn out to be a convenient smoke-screen for the real murderer, the Doge, whose full crimes are eventually discovered after he drives Columbine into suicide, which she fortunately survives.

"[3] John Thornhill, reviewing the novel in the Financial Times thought the book to be "conventional and self-indulgently enjoyable"[4] Thornhill considers that the story is "steeped in the classics of Russian literature",[4] whilst he considers that Akunin "toys with the styles and conventions of Russia’s illustrious late-19th-century writers.

"[4] Overall, Thornhill saw She Lover of Death to be an "artfully constructed novel [which] also nods in the direction of Arthur Conan Doyle".

[4] The Reviewer for The Sunday Times wrote that the Fandorin was an "engagingly original series"[5] which was "a fascinating mixture of pathos and pastiche; his characters are larger than life but never absurd.