The Dante Club is the first novel, a mystery, by Matthew Pearl, who developed it from a senior thesis completed while he was an undergrad at Harvard - quite a spectacular debut, featuring intimate and fascinating knowledge of Dante's Commedia and the "Club" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell and others - that first translated it into English. In a sharp parallel with current events, the story also explores the fate of veterans of the civil war, returning to civilized Boston after enduring unimaginable horrors on the battlefield. These subjects combine in a series of meticulous and grisly murders, carried out with fidelity to some of the punishments in The Inferno. Quite a good read!