Soviet Crime Drama

[Santa's Boyfriend]

I've been wondering for a while about what kind of crime and detective fiction was around in Russia during the Soviet era.  Then, yesterday, I chanced upon an article stating that crime and detective fiction was hugely popular during that time (as indeed it always has been in Russia).  I'd love to read some, or indeed see a movie of that type.  Does anyone have any experience of Russian crime fiction, and can anyone recommend anything to me?

[Don_Preston]

This is from Wikipedia:

Mystery was another popular genre. Detectives by brothers Arkady and Georgy Vayner and spy novels by Yulian Semyonov were best-selling,[20] and many of them were adapted into film or TV in 1970s and 1980s.

Not the biggest list, and I've yet to see if they've been translated.

EDIT: Christ, £20 for a 300 page novel by Semyonov!