Azazel (2002) (Азазель) is a made-for-television Russian version of Boris Akunin's introductory 'Erast Fandorin' novel The Winter Queen. The movie added to the fame of the original novel.

One of the quotes on the book's cover describes it as "Think Tolstoy writing James Bond with the logical rigor of Sherlock Holmes". This might be an exaggeration, but the story is enjoyable and well paced, albeit the plot is predictable and obviously developed along the way. The central character is fairly rounded with plenty of scope for development in the later stories and the pre-Revolutionary Russian backdrop is well realized and evocative.

Based on the worldwide bestselling novel by Boris Akunin, this is the tale of a global terrorist conspiracy. What would cause a talented young student from a wealthy family to shoot himself in full view of the promenading public in the Alexander Gardens? Decadence and boredom, most likely, is what the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division of the St. Petersburg Police thinks, but he's curious enough to send out the newest member of the Division, Erast Fandorin, a young man of irresistible charm, to investigate. Fandorin - naive and anxious to learn - vacillates between bravery and fear as he throws himself whole heartedly into this mystery. Murder and deception compete with duels and reckless gambling as Fandorin finds himself entangled in the web of the mysterious beauty, Amalia, a femme fatale who enjoys playing with the emotions and lives of her many wealthy admirers. Can Fandorin solve the mystery of the deaths without becoming the next victim? Written by Producer

Erast Fandorin, a government clerk turned detective, makes for an unlikely but gifted sleuth in late nineteenth-century Russia. The action opens a few years before the assassination of Czar Alexander II which begins the dark slide to war and revolution. A rich young man has killed himself in Moscow's Alexander Gardens, having spun a single cartridge in a revolver's chamber, pulled the trigger and lost at a game said to have been thought up in the Klondike gold fields and therefore called American roulette. The suicide note ostensibly explains the young man's motive: "Your world nauseates me, and that, truly, is quite reason enough." He has left his fortune to Baroness Margaret Astair, a British educator famed for her world-wide organization of progressive orphanages, which will shift the action for a time to England. Written by from NY Times