Suffer the Little Children - Couverture souple

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned to the hospital bedside of a senior pediatrician whose skull has been fractured, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men - a carabinieri captain and two privates from out of town - have burst into the doctor's apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him and taken away his eighteenth-month old baby. What can have motivated such a violent assault by the forces of the state?

But then Brunetti begins to uncover a story of infertility, desperation, and an underworld in which babies can be bought for cash, at the same time as Inspector Vianello uncovers a money-making scam between pharmacists and doctors in the city. But one of the pharmacists is motivated by more than thoughts of gain - the power of knowledge and delusions of moral rectitude can be as destructive and powerful as the love of money. And the uses of information about one's neighbours can lead to all kinds of corruption and all sorts of pain...

Donna Leon's new novel is as subtle and fascinating as ever, set in a beautifully realised Venice, seething with small-town vice.

PRAISE FOR

'The fabulous Donna Leon' Antonia Fraser in the Spectator

Through A Glass, Darkly

'Operatic brilliance. Donna Leon appears to have the knack of keeping her Venice-set Brunetti books as fresh as paint. Through A Glass, Darkly, like all her work, has the exuberance of a Puccini opera.' Independent

A joy from start to finish.' Evening Standard

Blood from A Stone

'[Leon's passion for all things Venetian - churches palaces, statues and especially the food - comes over loud and clear whenever Brunetti steps from his apartment into the street... No one writes about the gey areas of life better.' Guardian

Her debut as a crime fiction writer began as a joke: talking in a dressing room in Venice’s opera-house La Fenice after a performance, Donna and a singer friend were vilifying a particular German conductor. From the thought ‘why don’t we kill him?’ and discussion of when, where and how, the idea for Death at La Fenice took shape, and was completed over the next four months.

Donna Leon is the crime reviewer for the London Sunday Times and is an opera expert. She has written the libretto for a comic opera, entitled Dona Gallina. Set in a chicken coop, and making use of existing baroque music, Donna Gallina was premiered in Innsbruck. Brigitte Fassbaender, one of the great mezzo-sopranos of our time, and now head of the Landestheater in Innsbruck, agreed to come out of retirement both to direct the opera and to play the part of the witch Azuneris (whose name combines the names of the two great Verdi villainesses Azucena and Amneris).