Suffer the Little Children    by Donna Leon Order:  USA  Can Penguin, 2010 (2010) Softcover Read an Excerpt     Reviewed by Tim Davis Let me begin by asking you a couple of questions: Who are you? Who are your parents? How can you prove any of these so-called facts? These questions and your answers (which you must carefully consider) serve as the thematic foundation for Donna Leon's sixteenth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery. When the action begins, an eighteen-month-old child is seized from his parents by a group of gun-wielding Carabinieri, and the badly beaten father of the child lies in a Venice hospital. Then Brunetti attempts to interview the hospitalized father in order to answer questions about how and why the child was removed from his home. After all, Brunetti is rather concerned because he has had experience with the Carabinieri - 'too many of them who loved bursting in an imposing their sudden, terrifying authority, as if Mussolini were still in power and no one to say them nay.' Brunetti soon runs into obstacles as he delves deeper into a complicated scandal involving illegal adoptions, duplicitous conduct, and 'the {questionable} bureaucratic process that {leads} to the creation of legal identity.' With more twists and turns than a gondola trip from Ospesdale Civilie (where the beaten father recovers) to Staz. K. S. St. Lucia (where you must catch a train out of town in hopes of uncovering more evidence) via a stop at the box office at Teatro La Fenice (for no reason related to the story other than perhaps you do not want to miss the next performance of Mozart), the plot of Suffer the Little Children takes readers on a fascinating ride through Venice where deceit (personal and bureaucratic) and desperation (bureaucratic and personal) combine to make Brunetti's sixteenth outing an intriguing and provocative adventure. Enjoy! Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons. Find more Mystery books on our Shelves or in our book Reviews