I haven’t read all of Boris Akunin’s work, but I’ve read a fairly substantial part of it—enough to say that the series about Erast Fandorin is probably the most significant thing the author has come up with so far.
And so, when the hero’s life path started nearing its end, true fans were very saddened. The thing is, in my view the later books in the series fell far short of the first ten. Still, they were bought and read as soon as they came out. And when it seemed like Erast Petrovich was finished once and for all, first there was Just Masa, telling the story of his constant companion, and then suddenly The Pit came out, bringing back the wonderful detective himself.
The narrative throws us into a time when Fandorin is still a long way from death, but in Russia he’s already persona non grata, so he makes his living investigating cases in Europe. For example, together with Sherlock Holmes he fights Arsène Lupin. Yes, that story appeared earlier in the collection Jade Rosary Beads, and now the author takes us back to the very end of that investigation to tell us what happened next to our heroes.
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