BOOK REVIEW: The Dante Chamber by Matthew Pearl

Published 9:30 am Saturday, September 8, 2018

Matthew Pearl has made a writing career reaching back to distant-past writing careers.

His debut novel, “The Dante Club,” has Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and James Russell Lowell’s work translating Dante’s “Divine Comedy” interrupted by a series of grisly murders based on the punishments in the hellish tiers of Dante’s “Inferno.”

“The Poe Shadow” focused on the mysterious death of Edgar Allen Poe.

“The Last Dickens” focuses on the death of Charles Dickens and a mystery surrounding his last unfinished manuscript.

“The Last Bookaneer” involves manipulative plots to acquire a manuscript from Robert Louis Stevenson living in Tahiti.

All of Pearl’s novels take place in the 1800s, a milieu Pearl knows well.

He continues the trend with his latest novel, “The Dante Chamber,” a loose sequel to “The Dante Club.”

Here, the action takes place in England five years after the events of “The Dante Club.” 

A series of deaths appears to be based on Dante’s “Purgatory” with each death representing a tier of purgatory.

Holmes is the only recurring character from “Club.” Here, he assists poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson as they help a young woman find her missing brother and uncover who is behind the deaths.

“The Dante Chamber” can stand on its own. It is an intriguing read, though not as compelling as the original “Dante Cub.”

Pearl fans will notice references to some of the characters and cases from his novels, other than “Dante Club,” which are fun to discover.

“Chamber” is not one of his best, but likely a must-read for Pearl fans.