Akunin uses many historical settings for his novels. 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.