The Dante Chamber

Pearl continues his successful run of intricate literary mysteries featuring famous literary works and real historical literary figures (The Dante Club, The Last Bookaneer) with this complex murder mystery set in London in 1870. Real-life 19th-century poet Christina Rossetti’s brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an expert on Dante’s Divine Comedy, is missing, and she is worried. After several gruesome murders occur, each with a chilling connection to the punishments detailed in the seven terraces of Dante’s Purgatory, she fears Gabriel will be the next victim. The police, meanwhile, think Gabriel is the killer. Christina teams up with fellow poets Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes to find Gabriel and solve the murders, not realizing that one of the famous poets is a police informant and Scotland Yard already knows more than it lets on. The poets are naive and unskilled detectives boldly challenging London’s criminal underworld and a diabolical mastermind. Their investigation leads to opium smuggling, bomb-throwing Irish Fenians, and a strange Dante-worshipping cult. Pearl is a brilliant storyteller, vividly portraying London’s literary arts scene and the city’s fear and fascination with the occult and a serial killer. Pearl’s fans, and fans of historical thrillers, are in for a treat. (June)