The Dante Club Audiobook By Matthew Pearl cover art

The Dante Club

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

The Dante Club

By: Matthew Pearl
Narrated by: Boyd Gaines
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.07

Buy for $15.07

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel
In 1865 Boston, the members of the Dante Club - poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J.T. Fields - are preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions onto American bookshelves will prove as corrupting as the immigrants living in Boston Harbor.

As they struggle to keep their sacred literary cause alive, the plans of the Dante Club are put in further jeopardy when a serial killer unleashes his terror on the city. Only the scholars realize that the gruesome murders are modeled on the descriptions from Dante's Inferno and its account of Hell's torturous punishments. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and outcast police officer Nicholas Rey, the first black member of the Boston police department, place their careers on the line in their efforts to end the killing spree. Together, they discover that the source of the murders lies closer than they ever could have imagined.

The Dante Club is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante, his mythic genius, and his continued grip on our imaginations.

©2003 Matthew Pearl, All Rights Reserved (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved. Genre Fiction Historical Horror Literary Fiction Murder Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime Boston Scary

Critic reviews

"Expertly weaving period detail, historical fact (the Dante Club did indeed exist), complex character studies, and nail-biting suspense, Pearl has written a unique and utterly absorbing tale." (Booklist, Starred Review)
"Absorbing and dramatic...Pearl has proven himself a master." (Library Journal)
All stars
Most relevant  
If you can't get enough mysteries to fill your listening time, this one is worth a try. It's a quaint, historical, literary mystery that starts slowly, but has lots of twists and turns. Not the best I've come across, but not the worst. An interesting look a Boston in the 1800's.

Join the club

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I liked the story but I had a little trouble believing that the characters in the story really would have done these things in real life. I guess I have trouble with real life people being woven into a fictional story, not very believable most of the time.
I thought the beginning of the story was a bit slow but it did pick up the pace after a bit. I was a little dissapointed with the ending, I guess I was hoping for someone else to have actually been the villian.
Overall, not a bad story. I'd say just not a very riviting or memorable one.

It was okay

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This was disappointing. I didn't realize that this was an abridged version of the book. However,after going back several times thinking that my mind must have wandered, I came to realize that it wasn't my fault after all. Rather,it was the writing, or specifically the editing. Too bad, because the narrator does an exemplary job of vocal inflection, accents and nuances. Furthermore, there is much to glean from the subject matter, but it's too bad an unabridged version is not available (or at least I couldn't find one).

Poorly edited

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was excited to read this book and to listen to the wonderful Boyd Gaines read it, but the cutting was so jarring that I ended up just reading the book itself. The editor seemed to cut out descriptions of the possible suspects motivations and the “sins” committed by the victims - what make a mystery story tick. They even left out the chapter that gave the reader the ultimate insight into the, by then revealed, murderer’s brain.

Terribly abridged

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This was a well read mystery that held my attention so that at times I didn't want to shut it off. The narration is excellent and the characters so believable that at times I laughed out loud at the their antics while trying to solve the mystery. It's not overly complicated and a relatively short book but certainly worth a listen.

Dark yet enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Rather than repititious characterizations of the poets more energy should have been spent moving this mystery along. Was Longfellow really like that? This was for me a little known era and scene with great potential getting poorly stirred with the mystery, though scenes of immediate post-Civil War Boston were interesting. I did manage to get to the end, I think. I am aware it was fictional.

The Dante Club

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
<i>The Dante Club</i> is one of the most original story concepts to come along in awhile. The story take place in post-Civil War Boston/Cambridge and someone is killing well-known residents using Dante's <i>Inferno</i> as inspiration -- very original. Boyd Gaines does a relatively good job narrating the story, giving distinct Bostonian accents to each of the characters; although, one did sound too much like Thurston Howell, III. Even with the original concept and excellent historical characters, this reading suffered from a choppy abridgement. At times it seemed like the story jumped entire chapters. If you love a good, original, historically researched mystery, then <i>The Dante Club</i> is a good choice, even with the bad abridgement.

Original Story, Bad Abridgement

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The character portaits of real persons is admirably realized in this dark mystery.

Excellent Fiction

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not a terrible mystery but a bit slow paced for my taste. I found the plot pretty interesting but either the writing or the narration (it's hard to tell sometimes which is more important) was such that it moved very slowly especially in the beginning.

I had several false starts with this - deleting it from my OTIS and then re-doing it again until I finally worked my way through.

Tough to get in to.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly doubtful that I will remember the story in the next few days let alone in the next few months or years. Most interesting thing about the book is the setting but unfortunately the characters and the plot did little to add any value.

Boring.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews