The Dante Club is a novel that revolves around Longfellow's translation of The Divine Comedy. The plot is centered on a series of murders that are related to Dante's masterpiece. This is Pearl's first novel, and it shows. His prose is a bit forced and often much too elaborate for the simple whodunnit at the core of the novel. The plot moves much too sluggishly at first, and then turns into a potboiler only in the last fifty pages. It's a decent read, but not a harbinger of great writing to come.