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The article analyzes some significant crime-related rewritings of the Comedy - and of the first cantica more in detail - that project the shadow of Dante's Hell onto the modern world. The images and atmospheres of the underworld are therefore offered as the most appropriate background for stories of violence and madness, whose characters are always devotees (faithful or faithless) of Dante.

In the essay, the author conducts an intertextual inquiry that highlights the terms of the ‘dialogue’ between ancient and modern, in which Dante’s Comedy invariably returns a source the source, always alive and current, to which Giulio Leoni draws copiously for the writing of the novel I crimes of the Medusa, first effort of ‘his’ Dante cycle, and important ‘apripista’ for the revival of the reuse of Dante in contemporary genre fiction.

The ten circles of Dante’s Inferno, with the words that clash in eternity, are the background to the thriller of the Spanish writer who draws copiously from the medieval source and dialogues with Dante through the mad mind of his protagonist who, within a perverse play of mirrors, the poet is identified and assumes the function of guiding the world that ill-lives.