The Dante Club is an engrossing, intellectual murder mystery, complicated in its plot, with a surprising ending. Lovers of Dante will enjoy the discussions of his work and it's applications in the story. It's not a 'brainless' read, readers must pay attention, but it's well the effort.

Substance: Bending the facts about an historical curiosity to create a murder mystery, Pearl concocts a conspiracy around H. W. Longfellow's translation of The Divine Comedy, aided by O. W. Holmes, J. R. Lowell, J. t. Fields, and G. W. Greene. (So far have only finished Part I.)
Style: Muddy and pretentious, repetitive, and boring. ( )

Read: August 21-31, 2009

*******SPOILERS************

Synopsis: In 1865 Boston, a judge is found behind his house covered in blood, maggots, and blowflies. Shortly after, a reverend is found deep in underground tunnels beneath the church. He is buried head first, his feet on flames. African American patrolman and the Boston police are stumped.

An elite club of Harvard scholars and literary celebrities believes it must solve the murders in order to protect its namesake. The Dante club includes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J.T. Fields, who spend their time translating Dante's Inferno from Itallian. They fear that if the public makes a connection between the murders and Dante, that their project and Dante will be shunned and banned from Boston. They set out to find the murderer.

Pros & Cons: The first 100 pages or so were extremely slow and wordy. I enjoy reading a variety of genres and styles, but even I found it difficult to comprehend what was happening. I felt like a needed to be sitting in an ivy league library smoking a pipe and drinking scotch or whisky. The book finally became interesting once the club began to try to solve the mystery. The action and suspense were well written, and the descriptions of Dante and the murders were graphic. It was interesting to have such literary stars as the main characters. As intelligent and thought out as the beginning was, the ending falls short. The premise is good, but it feels quickly wrapped up. I feel like the solution to the mystery is perfect, just poorly written, and not along the lines with the rest of the book. ( )

Seems like I've been wanting to read this one for a LONG time & was finally able to get to it on audio. I'd heard so many raves about it, but I felt let down. I thought it was just "okay". As sick as it sounds, I really liked the descriptions of the murders the most & almost wished there were more of them in the story due to the uniqueness of each one. But ultimately, I found the story too drawn out and for some reason had a lot of trouble keeping the characters straight, despite the fact that they were almost all well-know writers, poets, publishers, etc. That may have been due in part because of the audio format, but perhaps also due to my ignorance in previous knowledge of these characters. Maybe...or maybe not. This is one instance where I think I may have gotten more out of an abridged edition, as I thought this story just dragged on a little too long. ( )

There really was a Dante Club, with many of Bosotn's 19th-century literary élite, that worked with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on his translation of the Divine Comedy.

In Pearl's mystery, which ranges throughout Boston and Cambridge, the Club tries to solve the murders of various Boston brahmins, murders that are very specifically, and down to the last detail, replications of the punishments of sinners described by Dante in The Inferno.

The solution is not satisfactory - it's complicated and quite a stretch - and I'm not terribly fond of books that attempt to place historical characters out of their milieu. That said, however, Pearl does a decent job of evoking the atmosphere of Boston in 1865, particularly the "town and gown" conflicts and the aftermath of the Civil War. And certainly you will learn a great deal about Longfellow and the other members of the Dante Club, probably more than when you had to memorize their poetry in school (or am I dating myself? do you have to do that now?).