The Dante Club - Revisiting - How does the setting affect it.

"The detective bureau...had been established in Boston with the aim of providing intimate knowledge of criminal's whereabouts, and therfore most of the chosen dectivies were former rogues themselves... detectives revereted to old tricks (thier favorites being extortion, intimidation, and fabrication) to secure thier hsare of arrest and warrant thier salaries... The last problem in the world he needed now would be his detectives trying to connive money from the wealthy Healeys' grief. pg 25

This immediately sets up the inefficiency of the police system. It has not reached teh sophisticated level of today and is not of much consequence. Though there are a few good "cops" like Officer Rey and Chief Kurtz, the rest are mostly useless, narrowminded and easily bribed. Thus, most of the police force is of no use in this investigation.

Rather, they are incapable themselves of solving the crimes, because these crimes are more intellectual and logic based than science and dna and fingerprinting, since these techniques obviously weren't devleoped before the 1900s.

So, by setting up an ineffective police station(which is actually an apt description of it), Pearl makes this "mystery/murder" one that needs to be solved solely through the intellect of the Dante Club, and those they choose to include.

Even more interesting, though is that this seems a combination of a Holmes' and Brown story.

Though it is set in the 1800's, and thus before the invention of technology, enabling it to be a mystery solved by deductions and logic - which it does have some of the time, it is also a mystery/thriller like Brown's novels. There are continual murders throughout the book which keep you interested and "spooked/scared/interested", but at the same time, there is also the translating of Dantes Inferno, and the solving of that which they believe is the key to the murder.

So, while it is a book based in looking for clues, interviewing suspects, and making deductiosn like a holme's story, it also includes the murders, thrills, and alternate story line of Dante's Inferno, much like that of Brown's Da Vinci Code.