Revised June 2011 version with three pictures.Before THE POE SHADOW, before THE LAST DICKENS, Matthew Pearl's debut novel THE DANTE CLUB won high mention and a spot on many best seller lists. Some think his early promise of literary genius may have been spent in this volume.The book begins a series of novels of murder mysteries about famous literary figures. While the second and third titles are indicative of the writers the books feature, Pearl's first provides no clues for the clueless. What you need to know is that in 1865, in Boston, a small group of literary geniuses brought forth America’s first translation of "The Divine Comedy" and created the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher J. T. Fields.And there was murder and mystery.