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by: Matthew Pearl
Amazon.com's Price: $7.99 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780345490384
ISBN: 034549038X
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: June 27, 2006
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: June 27, 2006
Sales Rank: 24058
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The New York Times Bestseller
Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes in Dante’s Inferno. Only an elite group of America’s first Dante scholars—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J. T. Fields—can solve the mystery. With the police baffled, more lives endangered, and Dante’s literary future at stake, the Dante Club must shed its sheltered literary existence and find the killer.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download Description:
Words can bleed.
In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club -- poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields -- are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions into American minds will prove as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbor.
The members of the Dante Club fight to keep a sacred literary cause alive, but their plans fall apart when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only this small group of scholars realizes that the gruesome killings are modeled on the descriptions of Hell's punishments from Dante's Inferno. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club members must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and an outcast police officer named Nicholas Rey, the first black member of the Boston police department, must place their careers on the line to end the terror. Together, they discover that the source of the murders lies closer to home than they ever could have imagined.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Not great but not terrible
This is the author's first novel and it shows. He's a little too impressed with himself and that shows too, making it hard to take the narrative seriously at times. The murders were horrifyingly disgusting which is good or bad depending on your tastes (I liked it). This is a hard book to get into but it is fairly entertaining if you're not expecting too much. Coincidences abound. The solution made me think, "Wait, what? Really? That person? Well alright. I guess I can go with that." If you have ... Read More
Rating: - A great idea that loses momentum
For a popular fiction novel, it was quite good. At the beginning, I was really into the mystery and tried to solve it along with the heroes of the story.
The idea of having a killer copy Dante was intriguing, and the scenes where the bodies are found are full of detail and gruesome to imagine. I also liked the idea of having four of America's literary giants try and solve a mystery.
After a while, the story got kind of boring and I wanted it to be over. I kept reading because ... Read More
Rating:  - Compelling Mix of Literary History and Mystery Genre
As I college graduate with a BA in Literature, I found Matthew Pearl's book to be a fascinating blend of American Literary History and intriguing murder mystery fiction. Turning Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J.T. Fields and Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr. into amature detectives, Pearl interweaves Longfellow's translation of Dante's Inferno, 19th Century immigration (which brought Catholicism to Boston), race relations, and the challenges of finding a serial murderer into a rich tapestry that appeals to all types ... Read More
Rating: - Maybe a little over-hyped?
This review's title isn't meant to imply that Matthew Pearl didn't do a wonderful job writing this book. I simply was unable to finish the book quickly. I typically place a lot of emphasis on how fast I read a book. If I can't put a book down for more than an hour at a time and finish it within a few days, I've obviously greatly enjoyed the book.
Now there are of course great books that one simply cannot finish in a matter of days. The Dante Club likely falls into this category. Period detail ... Read More
Rating: - Doesn't quite fulfill it's potential
There's been quite a few books lately that weave historical figures into fictional plots (Arcanum, the Poe Shadow, the List of 7, Not Quite Dead, the Terror). I admit to having a soft spot for them. I approached THE DANTE CLUB with great anticipation; the synopsis sounds like the movie SEVEN but set to gaslight. It does fulfil this premise in a surface way, however the execution of the novel come up short of great.
Most of my problem was the choices Pearl makes in unravelling the plot, and ... Read More
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