Suffer the Little Children

there are several things I enjoy about the Brunetti series: insight into Italian society and the differences that are included between Florence and other cities in Italy. I like the character of Brunetti, and that of his family members.

This series is consistently intriguing and enlightening. The extra dimension of Leon's world view makes it more realistic, which is a tall order for mysteries set in a foreign country, city with water for streets, etc.

Still reading Rod Stewart autobiography.....thoroughly enjoying it ! Rod's story is very interesting , told in a captivating way and it seems, nothing has been left out. I recommend this book if you enjoy as I do, biographies.

This book was only accurate on the first chapter. Everything else was very different than remembered by my mum who was also in the same place. While the children did suffer at the hands of the nuns most of this book seems to have gone over board for hype!

Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti Venice-centered mysteries are always a delight. Low key, witty, and descriptive with interesting, realistic characters and a glimpse at the frustrating ways of trying to solve crimes while working around the restrictive regulations and the political hack who heads the department.
In SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN, a pediatrician and his wife were asleep when a masked trio burst into their apartment. The doctor managed to pound one of the assailants on his nose but the doctor himself ended up in the hospital with a head injury, unable to speak. The attackers took away his eighteen-month-old son.
It turned out the attackers were Carabinieri, members of an official national military police force. The kidnapping was part of a multi-city raid targeting families that had adopted their children through a private source, lying about the parentage of the babies. The children were placed in orphanages, which really upset Brunetti..
Brunetti and his partner, Inspector Vianello, set out to find out how the doctor was targeted and how the entire adoption program worked. They uncovered a ring that involved pharmacists, doctors and pregnant women willing to sell their babies.
Once again, wealth and position do have advantages in the culture.
There is an interesting section about finding the truth on the internet and changes in birth rates.
It’s wonderful being able to read a novel that doesn’t include unnecessary violence, foul language, or sex scenes. Unfortunately, the chapters are unnecessarily short.

Donna Leon has such a talent for showing bureaucratic stupidity -- in all its many flavors. This story is about Italian illegal adoptions of children. The multiple plots in this book are rather complex to explain.

First, babies that are adopted through informal agreements between parents and adults hoping to adopt, do not have the kiss of approval from the government. When people are caught, the penalties can be much more serious than the new parents ever imagine.

Inspector Vianello, Brunetti's co-worker, investigates a new scam on the Italian medical system. Pharmacists and physicians have sweetheart deals in which doctors are paid for office visits that never take place. But one sanctimonious pharmacist goes further; he accesses medical files and leaks information to family members that have dire consequences for the person whose medical file has been hacked.

This book is one of Leon's most cynical. Everyone seems to be on the take. Government agencies make stupid decisions that can destroy families. The Carabinieri make midnight raids at the homes of parents with their new, illegally-gotten babies. I found this last atrocity reminded me of Stalin's reported midnight raids -- where those apprehended were never seen or heard from again. In this case, the new parents are given no opportunity to regularize their adoption; the children are taken and put into foster care. The new parents never get to see their children again.

One of Leon's best features is that she doesn't try to 'fix' everything at the end. Life is messy and she leaves it to the reader to decide what is right and wrong. This is such a unique story.

ASIN: B0097D7BXK

The Carabinieri stormed into a family’s home, hurt the husband, a medical doctor beloved at the hospital at which he worked, and took his child, a son whom had just called him Papa. He is devastated; Commissario, the Venetian police Commissioner, is bewildered. The Carabinieri never take command without the knowledge of the area police. Who wanted to hurt them onto the family of the pediatrician? The tale of heartbreak and rage of the father and the destruction of a business of another professional plods along with the help of Signorina Elettra and Vianello.

A complex plot and a horrifying ending.

There are at least threads here, tightly knotted at the end..

"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.

I am an audio book aficionado and David Colacci's narration of Suffer the Little Children is sheer audio perfection. I was mesmerized from the first dialogue with the old lady to the final amazing dialogue with the poor suffering misguided doctor. The voices of Brunetti and the other character flow seamlessly. During the Carabinieri raid my pulse was racing. Audio narration is performance art at its purest and best. Of course, I have to give Donna Leon some credit, her wonderfully low key books always manage to transport me to Venice, although I have never been there. The characters and Venice come to life in her writing and David Colacci's narration. David Colacci is Commissario Guido Brunetti, a perfect combination. At my book clubs I am always interested in the difference in literary experience between readers and audio listeners. It is often quite different. To those reviwers who thought this book was boring and especially to the one who thought the dialogues at the beginning and end served no purpose I strongly suggest listening to David Colacci's interpretation. Audio perfection.

"Suffer the Little Children" by Donna Leon in her very aptly titled book has the good-hearted, gentle Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police back in what is unquestionably the best book in the series that I've read. It ends with revelations, on a note of fatalism and inevitability worthy of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. It starts and ends with an act of violence. I was startled by several of the plot twists, particularly a cruelly ironic turn at the end in this superbly plotted novel.
Brunetti has a keen intelligence, is insightful, kindly, a good man devoted to his wife and children. He is also devoted to good Venetian eating and tasty wine. The book is replete with many details about meals and wines. Leon's stories are unhurried because she is as interested in exploring Brunetti's life and mental processes as she develops her story. The narrative feeds off the policeman's character and is processed through his sensibilities. Harry Bosch is on speed compared to the leisurely pace of Brunetti.
Venice is not only the backdrop to Leon's stories; it is an essential character in the narratives, and readers will get to know the city and its denizens better as each new book appears. Leon pays homage to the city she knows so well by her keen descriptions. Her characters, usually Venetian come to life, live and breathe.
Leon's are police procedurals but not gritty or hard-boiled ones. In this one Guido doesn't have trouble with his superiors the way he usually does; this time it's the heavy-handed methods of the Carabinieri, Italy's national police force, he's up against.
The book is about desperate parents who cannot conceive and who pay illegal operators to adopt babies sometimes from foreign immigrant workers. In one plot strand the sanctimonious pharmacist Franchi uses privileged information to malign people. We see complex interwoven plots come together at the end with ghastly results.
A great reading experience!

Once again we visit the wonders of Venice alongside Commissario Guido Brunetti. The theme this time around is the racket in illegal adoptions of children, usually from abroad or foreign mothers in Italy.

All of the Brunetti books are excellent, but I had one problem with this one. Every single sensible person in the story thinks it was completely wrong to take a toddler away from the family who has brought him up for 18 months after an illegal adoption and to turn him over to social services (and presumably an orphanage). The implication is that breaking the law should be ignored, and the possibility that social services might find a loving family to legally adopt the child is not even considered. But considering the point made about the demand for children, one would think that there should be no problem finding suitable parents.

Moreover, there seems to be an immediate leap from bad news at fertility clinics to buying a baby from an illegal immigrant. Perhaps in Catholic Italy there are no surrogate mothers, but if that is so, it would have been nice for someone to comment that such an alternative didn't exist.

Sometimes the conversation seems a bit forced as well, as if Donna Leon was in hurry to get the book written. On the other hand, the depiction of a very unsavory right wing extremist anti-immigrant political party is very good, and somewhat frightening.

There are some surprises at the end, and the book is a fine read. Just not as good as some of the previous stories in the series. There could have been more as well about the baby buying racket. We really only get an insight in one particular, and apparently untypical, case.

I picked up several Donna Leon audio books for sale at my local library, as apparently some patron of the library is a huge Donna Leon fan and has donated quite a few of the audio books.
I’ve never read a Donna Leon novel before so starting with the 16th Commissario Brunetti novel might not be the most conventional choice. That aside, though, I enjoyed it. Despite coming in late to a series I did not feel confused about characters or setting. I liked the fact that the story, although it is a police novel, contained very little actual violence.
Overall a light, entertaining read.

Suffer the Little Children starts out with a terrifying scene, as armed Carabinieri storm into the flat of a prominent Venetian pediatrician, take his son, and beat the pediatrician severely. How could the agents of the law do something so ghastly?

Well, as it turns out, there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and as this part of the plot (there are two parallel cases in this book) unfolds, the tale gets more complex and more sad.

Unfortunately, this compelling plot line gets intertwined with another plot line involving a set of billing frauds and privacy violations against Italy's health service. If you're having a hard time understanding how medical billing frauds are supposed to keep our interest compared with the first plot line, then you've come to the essential problem of the book. Just as the first plot line get interesting, we segue to medical billing frauds. Every time Leon makes this transition, it's more jarring than the parallel case technique is meant to be. I think this could have been a strong book with just the first plot line. Unfortunately, two for one is not always the best bargain.

In the early hours of the morning, the Carabinieri burst into the home of a pediatrician and his wife, seize their 18 month old adopted son and, when the doctor tries to stop them, hit him across the head with a weapon. Commissario Brunetti is called to the hospital where the doctor has been brought but can't get much information out of him as he is unable to speak. The plot unfolds to show a number of illegal adoptions for money, where pregnant, immigrant women are paid large sums of money to lie about the parentage of their babies and to hand them over to couples who are desperate for children. As usual, the everyday lives of the Brunetti's are included in this short novel and for me, they show a fascinating side of the lives of the middle classes of Venetian society, including details of their eating habits which show them enjoying small portions of superb food..perhaps that's the answer to eating well without gaining weight! The scariest character in the book is the pharmacist who believes that he has the God given right to sit in moral judgment of the imperfections of his customers whose medical records he holds ( an unfortunate side of the Venetian medical system) It's an interesting book with several stories running parallel to each other and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

First Sentence: ...and then my daughter-in-law told me that I should come in and tell you about it.

Commissario Guido Brunetti is awakened and ask to come to the hospital. A doctor of Pedriatics has been severely beaten. Three armed men broke into the apartment of the doctor and his wife and took away their 18 month old son. It seems the men were not local police, but Carabinieri, or military police and there as part of a raid on family who had adopted children illegally. During Brunetti's team's investigation, they discover a money-making scheme between the doctors and pharmacists wherein one of the pharmacists is motivated by his perception of improving morality.

Leon is a wonderful writer. Her ability to create sense of place and society is one of the best and she balances that with a humanity and humor in her characters. Brunetti is not one of the angst-ridden protagonists, but has a wife, family and city that he adores. The story is, at times, heart wrenching but the author doesn't overplay those aspects. The ending seemed a bit abrupt and was tragic but I did figure out the villain fairly soon into the book. However, Leon is always worth reading, just for her wonderful style.

Donna Leon's Inspector Brunetti takes on another of society's evils in each of her books. In Suffer the Little Children, it's illegal adoption and misuse of medical records. The title is a misnomer - in the biblical quote, "suffer" means "permit" rather than "experience pain." Nevertheless, it conveys Leon's intent, which is to look at the pros and cons of black market adoption. It's chilling to realize that babies are sometimes sold as involuntary organ donors. It's also chilling to recognize how, in many cases, victims are criminalized, while moral transgressors are covered by the law. Brunetti and Paola, Elettra and Vianello, are their reliable, trustworthy selves here, and Brunetti's work, personally painful to him, is contrasted sharply with the beauty that is Venice. Another thoughtful, well crafted mystery from one of the top writers of fiction at work today.

Leon's latest Brunetti novels have been met with reserved enthuisiasm by her legion of dedicated readers. While this 2007 work is at times difficult to follow, all of the ingredients are there for a satisfying Leon/Brunetti experience: Brunetti's bemused cynicism, Paolo's irreverent humor and insight, Vianello's increasing confidence and competence, Ellettra's saucy style and savoir faire, are all present throughout. Largely missing are the interplay between Brunetti and Patta, the mildly confusing dialogues with Chiar and Raffi. The villains in this one are subtly menacing and completely without sympathy. Of course, the star of any Leon/Brunetti novel is the city of Venice and its cuisine. The city is well displayed here in its radiant decadence, and the cuisine, as always forces the reader to put down the book and head for the kitchenat odd hours. One bizarre breakdown of editorship or galley reader competence shows up on p. 210 of the U.S. hardcover edition when Brunetti is interviewing one sub-character whose name is suddenly exchanged with another sub-character. Through it all, Leon's sympathy for the powerless downtrodden masses makes one want to weep along with Signorina Elletra over the destruction of the masegni. There is no such thing as a bad Leon/Brunetti novel. While one may have individual preferences, all should sit back and marvel at this delightfully informative, colorful, and instructive roman fleuve in which the 22nd installment has just come out in America.

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 looks at the harsh side of how adults take a cavalier attitude toward the best interests of children, especially babies. In that sense, it's like an expose of the evils of modern society where adults are more concerned about their convenience than about the young.

If you would like to read such an expose, Suffer the Little Children will go down well.

But if you want a murder mystery, you'll look in vain for one in this story. In fact, the main mystery relates to how the carabiniere caught wind of an illegal adoption. Even that mystery is answered without much effort when Commissario Guido Brunetti finally focuses on the question.

The book starts off promisingly enough. A pediatrician and his wife in Venice fall asleep after making love. Their slumber is interrupted as a carabiniere team invades their home, smash the husband in the head, and take their adopted son away. At the hospital, Brunetti tries to find out what's going on and gets a few clues from the carabiniere captain who led the assault.

The whole issue soon begins to fade as the pediatrician's wounds heal and the guilt of his illegal adoption becomes more apparent. Curiously, no one seems to be very upset about the child being taken away to an orphanage but the pediatrician.

Separately, Vianello uncovers some illegal payments being taken by physicians and pharmacists. In the process, Vianello finds more than he expects.

Brunetti also finds out more than he wanted to know about the political influences that the police kow-tow to in Venice.

I found the book to be slow, tedious, and lacking enough focus to be interesting. The continual emphasis on the irony of adults treating babies like merchandise soon wears thin.

Unless you feel like you need to read all of the books in this series, you could definitely skip this one and not miss anything.

I read all her books with a sense of anticipation and reluctance. The anticipation is for her storytelling abilities and the delight I have in knowing I will be provoked and delighted, the reluctance is that it will end sooner than I always like.
Once again an engaging read. Brunetti has a broad knowledge of human proclivities, yet he his always open to the nuances of personalities. About Leon herself, I went an author reading of hers she sparkles with intelligence,a wry sense of humor, an unapologetic passion for opera in Venice, and while she denigrates Americans in these books, there is no contempt for all things American.

Donna Leon is incredibly skilled at evoking the spirit of Venice, and Brunetti is such a marvelous character. Although not up to the standards of her earlier novels, this one is a vast inprovement over the previous two, which were little more than screeds on environmental issues. If you've never read any of her books, go for the early works; if you're a fan of Leon and have been disappointed by her more recent efforts, this is definitely a step up.

This was very well written and brought tears to my eyes. I am so shocked that the nuns were so cruel and heartless to these girls. What a horrible way for anyone to have to grow up. And these mothers and fathers were worse for putting their children in these horrible places. God bless France Reilly, I keep her in my prayers and admire her strength and fortitude.

I came away from this book dissapointed. There was no bulk, just wordiness; there was no interchange with Guido's family, no run ins with his boss, no stops for espresso and grappa along the canal, all the things I look for with delight. This book needed serious editing.

Perhaps with her next book, Leon can get back to the meat of the matter.

Nancy in California

I love Donna Leon but the unwavering political correctness of the policeman and especially his wife are becoming boring, perfect family, perfect children, perfect food in contrast with the mess of the rest of the world - or at least, Venezia, usually works well, but this time not. The sadness of the doctor losing his son was not sad enough and his inability to see through his fascist wife a little too hard to believe. The only good charater was the fascist woman's father. He was really believable.

Still a good read, and Venice continues to be fabulous, but perhaps a little change in the formula would be welcome.

After so many excellent books I was really surprised at how ineffectively the plot and the ambiance were presented. It seemed as if Ms Leon was on a mental holiday and just couldn't give us all of those wonderful family insets of food, marital life and children that embellish and enrichen her books. The plot too was much too cruel at the offset and then just dwindled off. I sincerely hope she will be back in her priceless form for the next book.

This mystery is bleaker than most of Donna Leon's other stories. Everyone is affected, adversely, by the babyselling business. It is fascinating to see how punishments go awry for all sorts of people.

The copyediting slips up on page 210 where the name "Marvilli" is used mistakenly (four times) for "Marcolini," the person whom Brunetti is interviewing.

The ending seems contrived, but it's an an engrossing story, nonetheless.

Julian

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 Omertà, 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?

After years of producing top crime novels, this one is an absolute let-down for Donna Leon fans. The story about baby trafficking, which should have made a truly interesting plot, drags on forever without any real purpose and Brunetti acts without his previous spark and enthusiasm and worse, it seems without any knowledge of basic police work.

Except for a few new recipes and some interesting facts from Vencie, this thriller is written without any effort as to research and investigation of the topic.