Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery | Donna Leon

Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery | Donna Leon | Suffer The Little Children

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Suffer the Little ...

	Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery Donna Leon Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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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.

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Suffer ..... Children by Leon

Simply wonderful as are all of her Brunetti mysteries. I've read them all and now am finally going to visit her beloved Venice. I hope it doesn't disappoint because her books sure don't

Suffer The Little Children

Leon is an excellent writer who presents a mystery while describing the life styles of the characters in fascinating detail. An outstanding read!

Slow paced mystery revealing a plague of corruption in Venice

Like her other Brunetti novels, this slow paced story meanders along, revealing corruption and decay within the church, the government, the police, and just about every aspect of life in Venice -- The hero remains easy going and sarcastic. This series is very engaging because the hero and his family are so accepting of the decay around them, and just ignore it to get their jobs done. They are worried about what the influx of millions of Chinese tourists may do to their vernerable old city, but Brunetti solves yet another crime in spite of all the barriers in his way.

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Don't approach as standard mystery

"Suffer the Little Children" is the sixteenth in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series by Donna Leon. Its setting is a seductive Venice, where there seems to be a disproportionately high crime rate if fiction is to believed. Brunetti is called into hospital where a respected pediatrician has been taken after being beaten by the Carabinieri (military and police corps). The enraged doctor's wife informs Brunetti that they were asleep when three men broke into their home, took their little boy by force, and attacked her husband. The Carabinieri leader defends their actions by stating that the doctor had illegally adopted the little boy and they were ordered to raid the house. This case is not a matter for the local police, but Brunetti is inflamed by the events and can't allow the matter to rest.

As Brunetti, with his sidekicks Vianello and Elletra, continue to investigate what's behind this ambush, they unearth evidence, not only of an illegal adoption ring, but also of a carefully coordinated swindle of the health system involving pharmacists and doctors. The tangential connection between these two plotlines is revealed late in the story and a twist in the last few pages reveals something far more sinister.

I've always enjoyed a Donna Leon book, but I've to say that this wasn't as cleverly plotted as the others. The story lags at several spots and given that the premise was not exciting to begin with, it gets even drabber as the story progresses. If read as a conventional mystery, there's no excitement or challenge of solving a bona fide puzzle, and the revelation of the villain at the end is no surprise.

However, if read as social commentary, it fares much better. Brunetti is a man of conscience and serves as the moral compass in Leon's novels. Much of the novel depicts a Brunetti who is greatly disturbed by many issues here--the fates of the children taken away from their adoptive parents due to the raids, the machinations of the wealthy and powerful, the seemingly effortless bilking of a health system that was supposed to help the population, and the antagonism toward Albanians in Italy. Leon can be polemic and when she is, she's very persuasive and thought provoking. Altogether a very interesting read if not approached as standard mystery.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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