Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery [Hardcover]

Donna Leon (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery | Publication Date: May 10, 2007

Donna Leon’s charming, evocative, and addictive Commissario Guido Brunetti series continues with Suffer the Little Children. When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a senior pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men -- a young Carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town -- have burst into the doctor's apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him and taken away his eighteenth-month old baby boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state so violent it has left the doctor mute? Who would have authorized such an alarming operation? At the same time, Brunetti’s colleague Inspector Vianello discovers a money-making scam between pharmacists and doctors in the city. But it appears as if one of the pharmacists is after more than money. Donna Leon's new novel is as subtle and fascinating as ever, set in a beautifully-realized Venice, a glorious city seething with small-town vice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Leon's 16th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, at once astringent yet lyrical, two rival police forces—Brunetti and his Venetian colleagues and the carabinieri—are both interested in a doctor who illegally adopts an Albanian infant. When three carabinieri break into the doctor's apartment and seize the child at night, they injure the doctor, leaving him mute. Much of the early action takes place in a hospital, and because Venetian hospitals appear only slightly less bureaucratic and Kafkaesque than their stateside counterparts, Leon's marvelous insights into Italian life, so sharp when she explores a military academy in Uniform Justice or glassblowers in Through a Glass, Darkly, aren't as fresh, sinister or compelling here. But once the IVs and bandages give way to vandalism at a pharmacy and the family secrets of a neo-Fascist plumbing tycoon, Leon regains her stride and the novel's last fifth is first-rate and masterful. Leon seldom delivers a "feel good" ending, choosing instead conclusions that are wise and inevitable while still being unsettling. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

On the face of it, there is very little crime in this latest installment in Leon's long-running and justly honored series starring beleaguered Venetian policeman Guido Brunetti. A case of police brutality sets Brunetti on the trail of an illegal-adoption ring and, from there, to a scam involving pharmacists and doctors. But genre readers waiting for the dead bodies to start piling up will have a long wait indeed; it isn't until the last 20 pages that any truly violent crime occurs. Leon's legion of fans, however, know that the Brunetti series isn't about crime as much as it is about more subtle human failings, and there are plenty of those here. Wherever Brunetti turns in this case, he is confronted by ethical dilemmas and by disastrously rigid responses to them. "I don't have any big answers, only small ideas," he laments, while tussling with what to do about the immigrant who sells her baby, the couple who adopts it, the pharmacist who adds moral judgments to every prescription he fills. In some of the best contemporary crime fiction, the heroes are often overwhelmed by the riptide of violence that threatens to consume their lives; Brunetti is equally overwhelmed but by a more insidious foe: our compulsion to judge others and the way those judgments ruin lives. "Nasty little bastard," Brunetti's wife, Paola, declares about one of the principal's in her husband's case. "Most moralists are," Brunetti replies. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (May 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087113960X
• ISBN-13: 978-0871139603
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #470,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A New Yorker of Irish/Spanish descent, Donna Leon first went to Italy in 1965, returning regularly over the next decade or so while pursuing a career as an academic in the States and then later in Iran, China and finally Saudi Arabia. Leon has received both the CWA Macallon Silver Dagger for Fiction and the German Corrine Prize for her novels featuring Commisario Guido Brunetti. She lives in Venice.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Suffer the Little Children, May 14, 2008

By 

egreetham (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Suffer the Little Children (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

The familiar and enjoyable elements of Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti novels--trenchant observations of the beautiful and corrupt city of Venice, and an engaging and humane hero with rich collegial and family relationships --are abundantly present in "Suffer the Little Children." Unfortunately Ms. Leon has thrown the book off balance: her understandable distress at the situation she is depicting (the sale of babies for adoption) overpowers the story. It seems more something we are being educated about, rather than something exposed naturally in the course of Brunetti's investigation. We are not allowed to develop our own sense of indignation and sadness at what people will sink to and what terrible decisions we make--Leon does it all for us.

Although "Suffer the Little Children" is better than some of her recent work, it does not achieve the high standard Ms. Leon set for us in the earlier Brunetti novels.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Leon's latest keeps pace!, April 25, 2007

By 

Billy J. Hobbs "Bill Hobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

Attacking corruption seems to be a favorite theme of Donna Leon. And along the way, there's usually a murder or two to solve. And in the case of her latest Commassario Guido Brunetti thriller, Leon is, once again, on target.
This time the venerable Venice police officer is confronted with the issue of illegal child adoption practices and the accompanying ramifications therein. As in the previous 15 Brunetti novels, Leon looks at her home city and addresses one or more of its myriad problems, social and otherwise. Still, this series is not about Venice, which she loves, but those characters and issues that attack the sheer beauty and even moral turpitude of the Pearl of the Adriatic.
In "Suffer the Little Children," Brunetti early on is called to the hospital after learning that one of its doctors has been beaten almost to death by a police team, which had stormed the doctor's home and, aside from the beating, had taken the doctor's 18-month old son, which, as it turns out, is an adopted son. Thus the plot kicks into a higher gear. Brunetti learns, from his various sources and own initiative that adopting children is not only a lucrative business but also highly illegal in some circumstances. The ramifications of such adoptions, of course, is wide open. A second running issue in the book is the investigation of a pharmacy-doctor scam that seems to be widespread.
With Brunetti's ace team (Signorina Eletra and Sgt. Vianello, especially),
the cases eventually come to a conclusion. Of course, as is usual for a Leon book, the endings are not always satisfying to the reader who is looking for the "happily ever after" approach. Brunetti (and Leon) do not solve the corruption and other socially significant issues, as, of course, these issues continue right along, but they do work on "justice, one person at a time." The murderer usually pays for his (or her) crime. Leon, though, says she's not about to give up on Venice, but sometimes "political corruption is simply a way of life there."
Leon's Brunetti series is first rate, beginning with "Death at La Fenice."
(She's a big fan of opera.) Leon's sharp narrative skills, fast-paced plots, and incredible character development are always great reads. In "Suffer the Little Children," however, the book seems to be rushed and Leon doesn't take the time to explore further her central characters (they are all gold mines!), although she perhaps feels that the previous books have said enough. Fast-paced is one thing, but "rushed" is another and in this one, more time and deliberations should have been devoted. She says she's already finished the next Brunetti and is "thinking about" the one after that--news that will make her legions of fans happy!
[...]

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, September 18, 2007

By 

Chronepsis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

I have read all of Leon's Brunetti mysteries and this was the first time I was really disappointed. The story lacks focus and feels completely frazzled. There are too many things going on that never seem to get resolved. The writing style she uses for the interrogations at the beginning and end seems silly and doesn't make sense. I never felt a shred of sympathy for any of the characters, despite the horrible things that happen to them. I sure hope that she can find her old, captivating writing style again or I will have to just go back to re-reading her earlier novels.