Now even book websites have Flash intros. This is not progress.
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl is jumping on The Da Vinci Code bandwagon for pseudo-historical fiction, which I classify as fiction involving real people. Paperback edition even has a Dan Brown blurb almost as prominent as the title… guess it worked, because I bought it and read it on the airplane (mostly).
This tale blends the literary leading lights of Boston in the 1860s into a murder mystery. Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Fields, Tickner, Emerson… all but the last two are lead characters, as Pearl creates a Dante-inspired serial killer moving in lockstep with the Longfellow-led translation of Dante’s masterwork, a first in America.
I took the plunge to buy the book because several of those names were the founders of The Atlantic. I haven’t read Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, even in English. (Cue lament for the decline of classical liberal arts education. OK, enough.) (Full text available free, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.)
Verdict on the book? It’s acceptable, but tries to hard to dress up a murder investigation in historical connections.