Product Description

A riveting new mystery from international bestseller Donna Leon

Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series has made Venice—a city that’s beautiful and sophisticated, but also secretive and corrupt—one of mystery fans’ most beloved locales. In this brilliant new book, Brunetti is summoned to the hospital bed of a respected pediatrician, where he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men had burst into the doctor’s apartment, attacked him, and kidnapped his eighteen-month-old son. What could have motivated an assault so violent that it has left the doctor mute? And could this crime be related to the moneymaking scam run by pharmacists that Brunetti’s colleague has recently uncovered? As Brunetti delves deeper into the case, a story of infertility, desperation, and illegal dealings begins to unfold.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11909 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-29
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

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

Review
“ Leon’s sixteenth Commissario Brunetti mystery is brilliant; she has never become perfunctory, never failed to give us vivid portraits of people and of Venice, never lost her fine, disillusioned indignation.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The New York Times

“ Suffer the Little Children . . . is terrific at providing, through its weary but engaging protagonist, a strong sense of the moral quandaries inherent in Italian society and culture.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“ Donna Leon is the undisputed crime fiction queen. . . . [Her] ability to capture the city’s social scene and internal politics is first-rate, as always, but this installment carries extra gravity and welcome plot twists that make it one of the series’ better efforts.”
—The Baltimore Sun

Customer Reviews

Leon's Starting to Slip
This isn't a very good effort by Leon. The plot is vague and unfocused. There's not much action. There's not much Venice. There's not much suspense or excitement. Hope Leon is not getting tired.

Confusion Abounds
In this 16th of the Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery series, the reader is led through a convoluted plot in which there are more questions than answers. In the middle of the night, Brunetti is summoned from a deep sleep to the hospital bed of a doctor who has been assaulted when his home was invaded and he was struck by a rifle [...] leaving him seriously hurt and unable to speak. The doctor's 18-month-old son was removed from the home.

In a separate plot line, Brunetti ands his staff are investigating the possibility of fraud on the part of pharmacists and doctors bilking the state of insurance money (see, it's not limited only to Medicare and Medicaid fraud in the United States). The question arises whether or not the two separate crimes are related.

In the casual style of a Brunetti investigation, the facts begin to unfold. And the story is told with the author's accustomed vivid portrayals of Venice, characterization, mystery and social views. Once again, Donna Leon has given us a novel to treasure. [It should also perhaps be noted that Ms. Leon's newest book, The Girl of His Dreams, has just been released in hardcover.] Highly recommended.

Suffer the Little Children
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.