This is a first novel from this author. It is a little difficult to start - it tkes a while for any action to really take place. The main characters are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendall Holmes, and James Russell Lowell as well as the publisher J.T. Fields. They are translating Dante's Inferno and a series of murders take place around Boston that they recognize as being based on the punishments in Inferno. The dialogue is a little stuffy and it is obvious the author was a student of Dante - but the plot seems a little obvious. The book wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. Maybe it "just wasn't my cup of tea".