Pretty nice, short, historical novel. There are some gruesome murders afoot and the only people who understand what's going on are the members of the Dante Club, a small group of intellectuals dedicated to the project of translating Dante's Divine Comedy into English and spreading its influence and wisdom throughout the United States. Their leader and the main translator is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow and the other illustrious members are Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, their publisher, J. T. Fields, and a very old and enfeebled George Greene.
The story has a nice pace and a few pleasant turns of phrase. The story is broken into three Cantos, as was The Comedy. In Dante, the wanderer was Dante himself and his guides were Virgil and Beatrice. In this, story, the wanderers are the members of the Club and their guides are each other. There's a rivalry between Russell and Lowell that sets up a nice tension in the book.
I had considered the actual murderer for a moment and then passed on him, so by the time the culprit was revealed I was quite uncertain of it, but not surprised.
