The Dante Game: (The Homer Kelly Mysteries)

Drugs, murder, and the Catholic Church confound Homer's trip to Florence. When the Pope issues a sweeping edict calling for a yearlong war on drugs, no one is more surprised than the Vatican to find the campaign a success. In every Catholic corner of the world, young people throw down their needles to pick up crosses. In Florence, thousands of them converge on the Duomo to thank Christ for their newfound commitment to sobriety. Nearly everyone is relieved by this development -- save for Leonardo Bindo, banker and druglord. To get his business back on track, he seizes upon a simple plan: Kill the Pope. Standing in his way is Homer Kelly, transcendentalist scholar and occasional detective. In Florence to teach at a new international university, Homer stumbles on Bindo's scheme while investigating the disappearance of a beautiful young student. His Italian may be lousy, but Homer is the only man who can save Italy from itself.

About the Author :
Winner of the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award, Jane Langton (b. 1922) is an acclaimed author of mystery novels and children's literature. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Langton earned degrees in astronomy and art history before she began writing novels, and has set much of her fiction in the tight-knit world of New England academia. She published her first novel, The Majesty of Grace, in 1961, and a year later began one of the young adult series that would make her famous: the Hall Family Chronicles. In The Diamond in the Window (1962) she introduced Edward and Eleanor, two New England children whose home holds magical secrets. Two years later, in The Transcendental Murder, Langton created Homer Kelly, a Harvard University professor who finds himself solving murders. These two series have produced over two dozen books, most recently The Dragon Tree (2008), the eighth Hall Family novel. Langton continues to live, write, and illustrate in Massachusetts.

Review :
'Civilized, literary... With characteristic wit (and pen-and-ink illustrations), Langton creates a love song to the architectural and cultural richness of Florence.' -- Publishers Weekly. 'As voluptuously detailed as any armchair traveler might desire ... [Langton's] exuberant wit runs riot.' -- The New York Times Book Review . 'Delightful and always beguiling.' -- The Boston Globe. 'After 30 years of writing whimsical mysteries about an eccentric New England philosopher named Homer Kelly, Jane Langton is still full of intellectual curiosity.' -- The New York Times Book Review . 'This remarkable series shows no signs of letting up.' -- Booklist. '[Langton writes with] ebullience and good humor and a sort of picnic charm of abandon and play.' -- Eudora Welty. 'Today's best American mystery writer.' -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch.