The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl

"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 Harbour.

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 modelled 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."

This is not a long book, but it often felt that way. Verbose, densely-written, with constant references to the state of literature, and publishing, in Boston just after the end of the Civil War. It really helps if the reader has some knowledge of the history, location, and the social and political complexities of the time. Seriously, it often assumed we all know who Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a few others are and that we are privy to a large amount of personal information about each. Because of this fact, there is unfortunately very little characterisation and growth in the characters. None of their voices felt unique, nor did I  feel like I was seeing a literary hero come to life on the page before me. Now I do know who they are, but I still mixed them up.

I'd be reading about one of them dashing off somewhere and then the scene would change to the study of a house where another was sitting, reading, perusing - and I'd think, wasn't he just running down the road? No, no, no! Get your famous, mid-nineteenth century New England, literary figures straight!

The book is a mixture of real historical facts and a well - crafted fictitious story. Most of the characters were real people and the main ones are celebrated poets. This is one of the most interesting features that I have found in Pearl's book. This feature gives realism to the story, and in this story, the poets of the Dante Club assume the role of detectives in their attempt to find a serial killer. 

However there where many side plots that weren't dealt with. The police officer of mixed-race, Nicholas Rey, is just... kind of there. We never delve deeper into his phycological state, he never says or is used to demonstrate anything interesting about the social time/ racism in Boston. There is nothing said about the hypocrisy of the Northern States who fought for the freedom of slaves but where still battling against their own racism. It would have also been interesting to see how these old rich white men would react to having to work closely with a mixed race man. 

There where also no women in this book. No main characters and not even an interesting side character that felt well fleshed out. It was frustrating and disappointing. I don't need every book to have a strong female protagonist, and watching a group of grandpa's trying to solve crime was sweet, but at least have a fleshed out supportive wife or spunky daughter/granddaughter, please. 

It was, overall, an interesting read. There were many surprising twist and turns. The historical facts relating to the time of Dante translation were quite intriguing. However, I found the flow of the story choppy, awkwardly cutting from scene to scene and the pace very, very slow. There was suspense, but it was built up so incrementally and only towards the very end. When Pearl finally does start to delve into the psychology of the killer (which was intriguing and actually my favourite part of the book), it was far too little, far too late.

Age Rating 15+. The murder scenes are really quite brutal, far more so than I was expecting from the tone of the rest of the book.