The Dante Chamber

June 11, 2018
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.

Listeners unfamiliar with Pearl's earlier work, THE DANTE CLUB, will easily follow his second installment, set four years later in London, 1870. Narrator Steve West's measured cadence and deft characterizations infuse British literary luminaries Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Browning with depth and emotion as they race to find a missing Dante Gabriel Rossetti amid sinister events. Deaths predicated on Dante Alighieri's vision of Purgatory pique famed Scotland Yard Inspector Adolphus "Dolly" Williamson's interest as he also tracks Fenian Brotherhood operatives. A reluctant Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes also joins the fray, along with a familiar antagonist. West's assured tone guides escalating events and intensifying emotions, though the narrative slows at times in the second half. An afterword provides insight into the era and characters. J.R.T. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine