“Regarding “In aftermath of MetroLink guard’s murder, Bi-State CEO sticking with policing strategy” (Feb. 3): If it wasn’t so tragic and pathetic, one would almost have to laugh at Bi-State Development Agency President and Chief Executive Taulby Roach’s intention to keep MetroLink’s “revamped security system.” What security system? Security guards and contracted employees can’t carry deadly weapons, but the man who allegedly killed that young security guard had a weapon — possibly stolen or illegal. Riding MetroLink is like a descent into “Dante’s Inferno”: shouting, smoking, drug use, fights, robberies, murders. If it’s not safe for the security guards, who is safe? What a shame MetroLink has plunged into Dante’s hell.” [. . .] — Robert Cohen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 7, 2021.
Criminal Minds, “The Performer,” Season 5, Episode 7 (2009)
The rock star who is linked to all the murders in the episode uses the stage name Dante.
Contributed by Ella Mizera (University of Pittsburg, ’24)
Dario Crapanzano, Il furto della Divina Commedia (2019)
“Milano 1954, Michele Esposito, preside in un liceo di Città Studi, ha una grande passione: i libri antichi, nei quali investe la maggior parte delle sue entrate. Grazie a un’eredità riesce ad acquistare, per ben quattro milioni di lire, l’incunabolo di una Divina Commedia del Quattrocento. Una copia rara e preziosa che il preside presenta solennemente al corpo docente dell’istituto. Quando, uno dei giorni seguenti, il libro sparisce dalla cassaforte della scuola, a indagare viene chiamato Fausto Lorenzi, un ispettore dagli occhi «di ghiaccio».
“Chi poteva conoscere la combinazione della cassaforte? Molti sono i sospettati: i docenti e anche la storica segretaria, che molti definiscono la vera preside. E quando viene scoperto un omicidio, Lorenzi collega subito il delitto al furto.
“Ma il mistero rimane fitto…
“Nella consueta atmosfera vintage della Milano anni Cinquanta, tra cinema fumosi e antiche librerie antiquarie, Dario Crapanzano costruisce un giallo appassionante e crea, dopo Mario Arrigoni, un nuovo personaggio investigatore, che sorprenderà i lettori e che proverà a risolvere lo strano caso del furto della Divina Commedia.” — Mondadori
Contributed by Ludovica Valentini (Florida State University, MA ’18)
Review: Matthew Pearl’s “The Dante Chamber”
“In The Dante Chamber, Matthew Pearl’s new thriller — a sequel of sorts to his 2003 bestseller The Dante Club — murder takes a literary turn. Sparked by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the crimes are solved by a crack team of poets and painters: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his sister Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson and the American doctor-poet-essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes (not to be confused with his son and namesake, the great Supreme Court justice).
“The murders take place in London in 1870. In the first murder, a member of Parliament is killed in a London park; a massive stone has inexplicably been tied around his neck and broken it. Soon thereafter an attractive woman dies on a London street; her eyelids have been sewn shut.
“Gabriel Rossetti, who was in the park during the first murder, disappears. His sister and friends fear for his safety, even as the police suspect he was the killer. Gabriel is fond of opiates and given to erratic behavior. When his wife died he impulsively had all his unpublished poems buried with her. Later, to the horror of many, he had them dug up.” […] –Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post, June 1, 2018
‘Dante’s Inferno isn’t hot enough for you,’ says judge
“STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Earlier this month, Anthony Morales admitted to slaying a neighbor and her son on a Mariners Harbor street two years ago.
“But the stocky 51-year-old defendant didn’t apologize for their deaths at his sentencing on Wednesday. Instead, Morales presented himself as the victim, claiming the decedents had harassed and tormented ceaselessly over the years, had followed him to a home he owned in Pennsylvania and had ‘come looking for’ him on the day they died.
“State Supreme Court Justice Mario F. Mattei listened patiently to Morales’ rambling seven-minute monologue in his St. George courtroom packed with the victims’ distraught relatives. And when Morales finally sat down, the judge didn’t mince words or hide his disdain.” […] –Frank Donnelly, SiLive, May 30, 2018
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