Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

Donna Leon

3.83

7,503 ratings by Goodreads

9781602830370: Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

ISBN 10: 1602830371 ISBN 13: 9781602830370

Publisher: Audiogo, 2007

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three mena young carabiniere captain and two privates from out of townburst into the doctors apartment while the family was sleeping, attacked him, and took away his eighteen-month-old boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state that was so violent it has left the doctor mute? As Brunetti delves into the case, he begins to uncover a story of infertility, desperation, and illegal dealings. Then his colleague, Inspector Vianello, discovers a money-making scam between pharmacists and doctors in the city. Medical records are missing and it appears as if one of the pharmacists is after more than money. What secrets are in the records? And what has been done with them?

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About the Author:

Donna Leon has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China, where she worked as a teacher. Her novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed, including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Silver Dagger for Fiction.

David Colacci is an actor and director who has directed and performed in prominent theaters nationwide. His credits include roles from Shakespeare to Albee, as well as extensive work on new plays. As a narrator, he has recorded more than one hundred audiobooks, earned eight AudioFile Earphones Awards, and been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award. His narration of The Suspect was named one of AudioFile's Best Audiobooks of 2007.

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
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