The Dante Club: A Novel [Hardcover]

Matthew Pearl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2003

A New York Times Bestseller
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.

The Dante Club is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante’s continued grip on our imagination, and a captivating thriller that will surprise readers from beginning to end.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Talk about high concept: in Pearl's debut novel, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell team up with 19th-century publisher J.T. Fields to catch a serial killer in post-Civil War Boston. It's the fall of 1865, and Harvard University, the cradle of Bostonian intellectual life, is overrun by sanctimonious scholars who turn up their noses at European literature, confining their study to Greek and Latin. Longfellow and his iconoclastic crew decide to produce the first major American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Their ambitious plans are put on hold when they realize that a murderer terrorizing Boston is recreating some of the most vivid scenes of chthonic torment in Dante's Inferno. Since knowledge of the epic is limited to rarefied circles in 19th-century America, the "Dante Club" decides the best way to clear their own names is to match wits with the killer. The resulting chase takes them through the corridors of Harvard, the grimy docks of Boston Harbor and the subterranean labyrinths of the metropolis. It also gives Pearl an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that he's done his history homework. The detective story is well plotted, and Pearl's recreation of the contentious world of mid-19th-century academia is engrossing, even though some of its more ambitious elements like an examination of intellectual hypocrisy and insularity in the Ivy League are somewhat clunky. There are, as well, some awkward attempts to replicate 19th-century prose ("But for Holmes the triumph of the club was its union of interests of that group of friends whom he felt most fortunate to have"). Still, this is an ambitious and often entertaining thriller that may remind readers of Caleb Carr.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Pearl's fiction debut should please fans of well-crafted literary mysteries. The title refers to an actual group of 19th-century Bostonians who gathered to translate Dante's Inferno for an American audience. Among the members of this exclusive "club" were poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, and poet James Russell Lowell. While poring over the poem, the men find themselves on the trail of a serial killer who tortures his victims in ways that seem to be taken straight out of the pages of Inferno. The police are at a loss and must rely on the club members' unique knowledge of Dante's work to help catch the killer. Pearl, a recognized Dante scholar, uses his expertise to create an absorbing and dramatic period piece. Using historical figures in a mystery setting is not a new idea (e.g., Sir Isaac Newton plays detective in Philip Kerr's Dark Matter), but Pearl has proven himself a master. Best for medium to large public and academic libraries.
--Laurel Bliss, Yale Arts Lib.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 372 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375505296
• ISBN-13: 978-0375505294
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (354 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Devine" Thriller, February 23, 2003

By 

Gary Griffiths (Los Altos Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dante Club: A Novel (Hardcover)

Every few years a book is written that breaks the mold of the standard mystery/thriller fare. Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose", Martin Cruz Smith's "Rose", more recently Boston Teran's "God is a Bullet", to name a few. "The Dante Club", the remarkable debut of writer Matthew Pearl, is another example that represents a bold, ambitious, and refreshing approach to the familiar serial killer "who-dunnit".

I'll admit that at first I was somewhat leery of the concept: the Fireside Poets - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell cast as investigators of a string of horrific murders? An ambitious premise for a novel, for sure, but more aptly, bizarre and ripe with risk. Pearl, however, pulls this off with a curious combination of the poet's love of the language and the storyteller's knack for pace and action.

The "Dante Club" refers to the group assembled by Longfellow - including Holmes and Lowell - to assist him in the first American translation of Dante's "Devine Comedy". As people in high places - a judge, a minister, a wealthy merchant - turn up tortured and murdered in scenes recreating those described in Dante's classic, the poets hit the streets of Boston and Cambridge in search of the killer. The result is an exceptionally well-researched book that is rich in historical detail while capturing the post-Civil War American psyche and culture. Pearl's description of the Civil War horrors and post-war trama is especially gripping. Not since "Silence of the Lambs" or "Se7en" have murders been so brutally and vividly portrayed, as the victims are variously eaten-alive by maggots, buried upside-down and set on fire, and (literally) cut in half. Yet despite the graphic butchery, this is a book that must not be rushed, but savored for the intricacy of the plot and the intensity of the prose. It is the rare book that draws the reader to revisit the poetry of Longfellow, US history in the wake of the Civil War, and the mystery of Dante in 19th century America. In summary, a stunning first novel from a writer destined to become a household name. Don't miss it!

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dante Club, August 15, 2003

By 

John Lubahn (Erie, Pa. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dante Club: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mattew Pearl's recent novel, the Dante Club, combines history, suspense, and mystery in a truly unique reading experience. Famous, well known characters such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Windell-Holmes and James Russell Lowe are intricately woven into a plot which develops around their translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Their work is disrupted however, when a series of murders in Boston are modeled after mankind's punishment in hell as described in Dante's Inferno. The murder of prominent citizens modeled after their translation make them suspect.

These noted historical authors work closely with a black police officer, Nichola Ray, to prove their innocence and solve the murders.

The vivid description of Boston in 1865 and the unique literary skill of Mattew Pearl to weave the history of the civil war and racial relations into this time period is pure genius. The words used to describe the Boston street scene at this time in history are reminiscent of Caleb Carr's description of New York City in his book the Alienist.

This book is a must for any reader who enjoys historical fiction and I would strongly recommend it to them.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great idea for a story, but I just couldn't get into it, April 15, 2006

By 

Melissa Niksic (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dante Club: A Novel (Paperback)

The premise of "The Dante Club" is absolutely fabulous: the year is 1865 in Boston, and a small group of renowned men (including physician Oliver Wendell Holmes and poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell) have come together to translate Dante's "Inferno" for an American audience. While the Dante Club is hard at work on their translation, a series of gruesome murders takes place around town. The Dante experts soon realize that each of the crimes is based on Dante's descriptions of Hell's punishments, and the group of scholars turn into detectives as they desperately attempt to solve the mystery and find the killer.

"The Dante Club" is a work of historical fiction. Most of the main characters in the novel are people who actually existed, and history and literary buffs will appreciate the way Matthew Pearl managed to wind these well-known characters into a murder mystery. Pearl is also a Dante scholar himself, and his superior knowledge of Dante's work is illustrated on every page of this book. However, all that being said, I didn't really enjoy the story. This book really dragged in a lot of places...the first 100 pages or so are incredibly dry, then things get exciting for a while, but by the time page 250 rolls around, things are dragging again. I was pretty disappointed. I really enjoyed "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Devil in the White City," and I thought "The Dante Club" was going to be sort of a combination of those two books. In a way it was, but it dragged so much that I just couldn't get into it.

Again, I really admire the effort Pearl put forth in developing the concept of this book, which is very unique and has the potential to be quite fabulous. Unfortunately, the writing is incredibly tedious in most places. It took me a long time to read this book, primarily because I was completely unenthused every time I picked it up...I knew I wasn't going to enjoy reading it, which was a real shame.