Auditioning for Hell

Academic historian turned Private Investigator Dante Steele's first cases involve 1) political and business corruption, 2) sextortion (porn blackmail), 3) statuatory rape, 4) sex trafficking of young women, 5) reckless sexual aspyxiation, and ) attempted murder. Named after Dante Alighieri, and steeped in his writing, Steele contemplates the circle of hell and punishment rendered in "The Inferno" for the wrong doers for whom he seeks retxribution.

During a boring departmental meeting at the university) Assistant Professor Dante Steele decides he has had enough of Ivory Tower Babel and walks out of the meeting—and out of his academic career. Two years later he begins practice as a licensed Private Investigator, His first clients are former residents of a trailer park who were forced to move when the city of Hintern sold the park's land to a Lexington developer who planned to build a shopping center. Some sixty households were uprooted, some unable to move their homes and all facing rising rents elsewhere. Steele's clients suspect that bribes from the developer greased the palms of city officials who voted for the project. They seek damages and vindication. Steele relishes the chance to provide some justice for little people and expose political corruption. As other cases follow, Steele, imbued with his namesake Dante Alighieri's vision of hell, The Inferno, Steele muses often of the levels of hell waiting for wrongdoers who are auditioning for hell. The first impression that many have of Steele, scholarly, cerebral, literate, causes them to underestimate his toughness—Dan Steele, the Underestimated P.I. He's no James Bond with a license to kill but he served two tours in Afghanistan as a marine officer in Psychological Warfare and is trained in martial arts. And does not hesitate to employ ruthless methods when necessary.

After an academic career in which he wrote books on U.S. political history and public affairs , Ron Formisano in retirement segued naturally to write crime novels featuring an investigative reporter. "Auditioning for Hell" introduces Private Investigator Dante Steele. Historians, investigative reporters, and P.I.s are all detectives. Two of his books of interest to the general reader are "The Great Lobster War" and "The Tea Party: A Brief History." "Publishers Weekly said the latter "merits attention for providing an even-handed perspective about America's recent political phenomenon.... His most trenchant observation might have come from a Pirandello play: 'It's partisans and critics alike, as if reading tea leaves. often see in it what they wish to see.' He and his wife Erica and Little Dog (a chihuahua: "death from the ankles down") summer in Casco Bay, Maine. His first try at fiction was a novella, "Hard Shell: Jack Benedict and the Stealer of Souls," about a lobster fisherman turned detective.