The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

I loved Dante's Inferno. Yes, it was hard to read due to a rough translation, but I still thought it was a great work of Art, very powerful and influential, especially for it's time. So when I heard that there was a book called "The Dante Club", a murder mystery about a serial killer who kills his victims in accordance with the tortures in Dante's seven layers of Hell, I thought to myself "this is a can't miss"

I don't think I have ever been more wrong. I hated this book. I don't think I even got past the first few chapters. I tried, I tried really hard. But I just couldn't do it.

I felt that the author was more interested in filling the novel with gross gorey fluff for shock value than telling a good story. I felt nauseous while reading the description of the first murder scene. I am all for a lot of detail in a book, but this took it way to far. I tried reading on after that, but I was mostly bored and my mind kept drifting back to the gruesome description of the murder, so I couldn't focus on what was really going on in the story very well.

So I would recommend this book if you either want to be bored, or you want to be grossed out, but other than that I would pass.