They encounter Nicholas Rey, the first black police officer in Boston, who respects their intelligence even as he is disturbed by their amateur investigation. As a result, they decide to conduct their own investigation, reasoning that their special knowledge of the poem will give them an advantage. They are worried that these crimes will negatively impact their work, and they are further concerned that since they are among a very small number of people familiar with the Inferno, they will be suspects. Reverend Talbot was killed in the manner of those who accepted bribes. Judge Healey, who had done nothing to oppose or support the freedom of escaped slaves in the North, was killed similarly to the “Uncommitted” in the poem, people neither good enough for Heaven or bad enough for Hell. When the members of The Dante Club hear the details of the murders, they are alarmed because they recognize both incidents as being taken from the Inferno, which is not very well known in America at this time. Manning tells Fields that he will be removing funds from the project.Ĭhief Kurtz responds to another bizarre murder Reverend Talbot, who wrote tracts opposing the translation of Dante’s work on behalf of Harvard, is found buried halfway upside-down over the money that he was paid by Harvard, his feet set on fire. Harvard as an institution is opposed to the translation, and Dr. The work is controversial in 19th century America because of its extreme Catholic point of view, and is officially a prohibited book in heavily Protestant Boston.
They refer to themselves informally as The Dante Club. The men are working to translate the first book of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, commonly known as the Inferno. Fields is working with a group of poets and writers including himself, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., James Russel Lowell, and George Washington Greene.
The scene shifts to a meeting between publisher James Thomas Fields and the treasurer of the Harvard Craper, Dr. Kurtz vows to the judge’s widow that he will solve the crime and bring justice to his murderer. Healey was first hit over the head and knocked unconscious, then left in the garden to be eaten alive by maggots and wasps. In 1865 Boston, Police Chief John Kurtz investigates the brutal and bizarre murder of Supreme Court Justice Artemus Healey. It is also a work of historical fiction set during the American Civil War, featuring many real historical figures as characters. The Dante Club is a mystery novel published by Matthew Pearl in 2003.
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