Changelog

Better written than The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons (a book which I read in one night only because I disliked it so much and wanted to finish the damn thing), to which it will certainly be compared. Really they don’t have much in common, The Dante Club is fairly straight literary historical fiction whereas The DaVinci Code is fiction about history (which is a lousy label, but I’m not good at naming things).

Anyways, I enjoyed the book quite a bit, thought the dialog can get a little thick at times (the author tries to kep speech set in a period appropriate manner which complicates things) and the ending of the book is rather unfocused. I’m very proud to say I was able to identify the killer a little more than half-way through the book, something I don’t do very often when reading mysteries. It’s interesting that this book centers around the desire to bring Dante’s writing to the American public, something which this book will certainly accomplish if it gains any popularity (also worth noting is that Longfellow’s translation of Dante was re-released along with this book — the publisher was thinking ahead). I’m certainly intrigued now, if only by the level gruesome detail that seems to be part of Inferno.