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| Suffer the Little Children (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries) | 
| Author: Donna Leon
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 126212
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0143113615
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780143113614
ASIN: 0143113615
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New, Excellent Condition, may have Remainder Mark, Clean Text, Never Been Read, Tight Binding , Immediate Shipping, Email Notification, Professional Service, MILLIONS Served, SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Suffer The Little Children September 26, 2008
Leon is an excellent writer who presents a mystery while describing the life styles of the characters in fascinating detail. An outstanding read!
 Don't approach as standard mystery September 19, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
"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.
 Biased and grossly inaccurate August 17, 2008
I began reading this book upon advice of a friend, and I was terribly disappointed: many times I was tempted to dump it, and I reached the end in the (vain) hope of a coup-de-theatre that never came.
Ms Leon has a very limited knowledge of Italian history and criminal laws. At the same time, she has lots of prejudices and doesn't hesitate to recur to lies and slander in order to justify them.
For instance, it is obvious that she doesn't like the military. That may be one of the reasons that made her hero Brunetti a member of civilian Polizia and not of military Carabinieri. To substantiate her dislike for Carabinieri, Ms Leon repeatedly questions their competence as an institution and has no problem in trying to ridicule them with a cartoonish description of a Captain wearing riding boots during a criminal police operation (total nonsense: even if Carabinieri officers are perfectly legitimated to wear riding boots, being all mounted officers, they are bound by explicit fragmented orders to wear the prescribed uniform for each and every operation they are involved into. A Carabinieri Captain leading a programmed criminal police operation wearing riding boots makes sense more or less like a Grenadiers Guard guarding Buckingham Palace with only his Government Issued underwear on). In her prejudice (soldiers = Fascists) Ms Leon reaches the point of stating (through Brunetti) that too many Carabinieri love acting "as Mussolini were still in power and no one to say them nay", willingly or unwillingly ignoring the fact that Mussolini used for his repression (besides his own Black Shirts) Brunetti's Polizia, and not the Carabinieri of which he never had the loyalty, which was unquestionably devoted to the King.
Moral relativism and double standard permeate the whole novel. Ms Leon deftly manipulates her readers, making them sympathize with people who broke the law or their vows/obligations with their spouses/partners, disdaining those who unveil their wrongdoings. The ultimate villain of the novel is someone who has dared to stick his nose into the personal data of some less-than-virtuous persons, informing the victims of their bad actions. Wow, what a criminal! More or less like a person who, seeing a burglar breaking into a house, calls the police. Poor burglar! How can he work if people (some religious zealots, undoubtedly) instead than minding their own business have to intrude in his life making it harder than it already is? Ms Leon should move to Sicily, where her love for Omerta, for the "code of silence" would be much appreciated.
All Ms Leon's prejudices float in the usual and trite collection of oversimplified generalisations on Italy: nothing works, everything and everybody is corrupted, all TVs belongs to one man, the media are not independent, everybody is on a permanent strike, Northerners are racists, all cities but Venice are stuck in an everlasting traffic jam, the Church controls everything with a Mafia-like grip, several new Saints are made daily, football players are constantly arrested, and so on and so forth. The only good things in Italy are food, Commissario Brunetti and, of course, Venice (which should be dismantled and rebuilt in some Eastern European country, like Bosnia or Bulgaria, to save it from those barbaric Italians. At least, Eastern Europeans appreciate it...). If a similar picture was given on any developing country, Ms Leon would immediately be labelled as a hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool racist. But against Italy and the US (which - even having nothing to do with the novel - are repeatedly lashed upon) all is fair, right?
Suffer ..... Children by Leon August 13, 2008
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
 Slow paced mystery revealing a plague of corruption in Venice July 30, 2008
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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