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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Suffer
the Little Children by Donna Leon |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Righteousness Donna
Leon hasn’t begun to exhaust the dimensions of human behavior as she presents
the 16th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery titled, Suffer
the Little Children. With the background of an illegal adoption and
actions by the carabinieri to break into a house to seize a child, Brunetti
faces the unraveling of certain moralists who behave in ways that few would
consider moral. As always, Leon presents characters and a plot that
encourages readers to think, and that allow Brunetti to get to the bottom of
things, wherever they lead. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter
3, pp. 16-19: Guido Brunetti lay
just on the edge of the sleep of the just, curled round the back of his wife.
He was in that cloudy space between sleeping and waking, reluctant to let go
of the happiness of the day. His son had casually mentioned at dinner how
stupid one of his classmates was to fool around with drugs and had failed to
see the look of relief that passed between his parents. His daughter had
apologized to her mother for an angry remark made the previous day, and the
words ‘Mohammad’ and ‘mountain’ sounded just at the edge of Brunetti’s
consciousness. And his wife, his sweet wife of more than twenty years, had
surprised him with an outburst of amorous need that had inflamed him as though
those two decades had never passed. He
drifted, full of contentment and greedy to run each of the events through his
mind again. Unsolicited repentance from a teenager: should he alert the
press? What caused him to marvel even more was Paola’s assurance that this
was not an attempt on Chiara’s part to achieve some quid pro quo in return
for the seemly expression of sentiments proper to her age and station.
Surely, Chiara was smart enough to realize how effective a ploy this would
be, but Brunetti chose to believe his wife when she said that Chiara was
fundamentally too honest to do that. Was
this the greatest delusion, he wondered, our belief in the honesty of our
children? The question, unanswered, slipped away from him, and he drifted
into sleep. The
phone rang. It
rang five times before Brunetti, in the thick voice of the drugged or mugged,
answered it. ‘Si?’ he muttered, his
mind flashing down the hail but instantly comforted by the memory of having
wished both of his children goodnight as they went to bed. ‘It’s
Vianello,’ the familiar voice said. ‘I’m at the hospital. We’ve got a mess.’ Brunetti
sat up and turned on the light. The urgency in Vianello’s voice, as much as
the message, told him he would have no choice but to join the Inspector at
the hospital. ‘What sort of mess?’ ‘There’s
a doctor here, one of the paediatricians. He’s in the emergency room, and the
doctors are talking about possible brain damage.’ This made no sense to
Brunetti, regardless of his fuddled state, but he knew Vianello would get to
it quickly, so he said nothing. ‘He
was attacked in his home,’ the Inspector continued. Then, after a long pause,
he added, ‘By the police.’ ‘By
us?’ Brunetti asked, astonished. ‘No,
the Carabinieri. They broke in and tried to arrest him. The captain who was
in charge says he attacked one of them,’ Vianello said. Brunetti’s eyes
narrowed as the Inspector added, ‘But he would say that, wouldn’t he?’ ‘How
many of them were there?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Five,’
Vianello answered. ‘Three in the house and two outside as backup.’ Brunetti
got to his feet. ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you
know why they were there?’ Vianello
hesitated but then answered, ‘They went to take his son. He’s eighteen months
old. They say he adopted the child illegally.’ ‘Twenty
minutes,’ Brunetti repeated and put the phone down. It
was only as he was letting himself out of the house that he bothered to check
the time. Two-fifteen. He had thought to put on a jacket and was glad of it
now, in the first chill of autumn. At the end of the calle he turned right and headed towards He
ignored the city around him. Five men to take an eighteen-month-old baby.
Presumably, especially if the man was in the hospital with brain damage, they
had not rung the doorbell and politely asked if they could come in. Brunetti
himself had taken part in too many early morning raids to have any illusions
about the panic they caused. He had seen hardened criminals whose bowels had
loosened at the sound and sight of armed men bursting in upon them: imagine
the reaction of a doctor, illegally adopted baby or no. And the Carabinieri — Brunetti
had encountered too many of them who loved bursting in and imposing their
sudden, terrifying authority, as if Mussolini were still in power and no one
to say them nay. At
the top of the The
portiere seemed to be asleep behind
the window of his office: certainly he did not look up as Brunetti entered
the hospital. Blind to the magnificence of the entrance hail though aware of
the sudden drop in temperature, Brunetti worked his way right and left and
then left again until he arrived at the automatic doors of the emergency
room. They slid aside to let him enter. Inside the second set of doors, he pulled
out his warrant card and approached the white-jacketed attendant behind the
glass partition. The
man, fat and jolly-faced and far more cheerful than either the time or the
circumstances warranted, glanced at Brunetti’s card, smiled at him and said,
‘Down to the left, Signore. Second door on the right. He’s in there.’ Brunetti
thanked him and followed the directions. At the door, he knocked once and
went in. Though Brunetti did not recognize the man in battle fatigues who lay
on the examining table, he recognized the uniform of the man standing at the
window. A woman in a white lab coat sat beside the man on the table,
smoothing a strip of plastic tape across his nose. As Brunetti watched, she
cut a second strip and placed it parallel to the other. They anchored a thick
cotton bandage to the man’s nose; both nostrils were plugged with cotton.
Brunetti noticed that there were already dark circles under his eyes. The
second man leaned comfortably against the wall, arms and legs crossed,
observing. He wore the three stars of a captain and a pair of high black
leather boots more appropriate for riding dressage than a Ducati. ‘Good
morning, Dottoressa,’ Brunetti said when the woman looked up. ‘I’m
Commissario Guido Brunetti, and I’d be very grateful if you could tell me
what’s going on.’ From
this beginning, it takes a long time for Brunetti to find out what’s really
going on. Suffer
the Little Children reveals the righteousness that can be such a powerful
driver of human behavior, but can so often be misplaced. Steve
Hopkins, September 25, 2007 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Suffer the Little Children.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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