Suffer Little Children

You may be looking for the Dirty Dozen zine, Suffer the Children.

Zine
Title:	Suffer Little Children
Publisher:	Pat M. (140 pages), reprint by Bill Hupe (132 pages)
Editor:
Author(s):	Tish
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	1995
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Professionals
Language:	English
External Links:
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front cover

back cover

Suffer Little Children is a 135-page slash Professionals novel by Tish. Two interior illustrations by 2C Graphics.

flyer from DIAL #2

Summary from the Flyer

When children start to disappear, CI5 is called in to investigate. Cowley believes Tony Roscoe, known paedophile, could be back in business again.

Roscoe has a weakness for green-eyed, curly-haired androgynous boyfriends, the more subservient, the better. Having failed to get a lead on where Roscoe might be holding the children by conventional methods, Cowley's only course of action is to send in one of his agents to pose as Roscoe's next 'boyfriend'. Only one of his agents fits the bill: Ray Doyle. Unfortunately, Doyle is straight. Bodie, however, is bi. He is also secretly in love with Doyle. Cowley knows this. Doyle doesn't. Bodie is given the task of 'teaching Doyle the trade'. For 36 hours, he has Doyle just where he's always wanted him; but for all the wrong reasons. He then has to let Ray walk into the hands of a known paedophile, knowing Doyle will be hurt and abused, knowing not all the scars will be physical.

This is a B/D slash zine with the emphasis on hurt/comfort. Although it is set against the background of a paedophile ring, it does NOT feature sex with children. It does, however, contain sexually explicit material of a same-sex nature and will not knowingly be sold to anyone under 18 or to anyone who does not understand and accept the slash premise.

Interior Gallery

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  interior art by 2C Graphics

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  interior art by 2C Graphics

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  sample text

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN is a novel by Tish written in 1995. I don't know the original publisher; my copy is an authorised reprint by Kennedy and Hupe, who decamped from fandom some time ago. The zine has 132 pp of text; there are two interior illos by 2C Graphics.

As far as formatting and presentation is concerned, this zine is the worst example of amateur publishing I've encountered. I haven't seen all the zines in this fandom, but this one ranks, as a prepared text, below the sloppiest of the circuit stories I've seen. I can hardly conceive of a poorer formatting job.

Some paragraphs are indented while others are not in a haphazard fashion that makes reading the text confusing. Furthermore, some paragraphs--whether indented or not--have a blank line between them for no discernible reason. The meaning of the text at these places indicates a continuation rather than a break in the action; actual section breaks are marked by centred asterisks. Quotation marks at the beginnings and ends of sentences are usually, though not always, separated from the word that follows or the punctuation that precedes it by a space. At other times, there are two, and sometimes three, spaces. Question marks and exclamation points also usually have a space separating them from the word they follow. The spacing problem may result from justifying the text to both left and right margins, though these spaces also appear in sentences that don't fill a line of type. Whatever the cause of this problem, whether due to the processor used in formatting or simply to lack of care, the result is off-putting; it becomes even more problematical when combined with the inconsistent indentation throughout. I wish these problems had been eliminated in a text that was to be offered for sale.

Other problems are perhaps attributable to author error. Ellipses vary from three dots to a high of ten of those I counted, and again have haphazard spacing. Emphasis is sometimes indicated by all caps and at other times by underlining while double exclamation points are also sometimes used to suggest emphasis. Characters' thoughts are bracketed in virgules, but again the use is inconsistent as some thoughts are bracketed while others aren't. In more than one instance, a line of dialogue is broken by a bracketed thought without appropriate use of quotation marks to signal what's happening.

These problems accumulate into an intensely irritating reading experience for anyone who cares about the presentation of a text. Since there are also some punctuation and grammatical problems, the novel would appear to have been either unedited or worked on by an editor of poor skills.

The story itself concerns the investigation of a paedophile and the traumatic aftermath of the op. Doyle, although he has no gay experience, goes undercover as bait for Tony Roscoe, a suspect in the disappearance of several children who favours, quite serendipitously, "green eyed androgynous types" (3) as boyfriends. Since Doyle has no homosexual experience, Cowley sends him to Bodie with instructions that Doyle be initiated. The following excerpt gives the flavour of the characterisations as well as the formatting:

"Have you ever had sex with a man before, Ray ? "

Doyle shook his head." No." He looked across at Bodie. " Cowley said you'd show me what to do."

He said it so quietly that, at first, Bodie didn't react. Once the damning words had registered though, he leapt to his feet, livid with rage.

" He said WHAT ? "

Doyle looked up at him nervously, unsure of what was happening and shocked by the anger in Bodie's voice. Bodie crossed the room and reached for the phone.

" Bodie ?.......... Bodie, what are you doing ? " This as Bodie lifted the receiver.

" I'm going to tell Cowley just where he can shove his job........ !"

" Bodie, don't........ please. " Doyle pleaded, " This is hard enough for me as it is. I don't want you to be angry with me. What have I done ?"

Bodie slowly replaced the receiver and looked... really looked...at his partner for the first time. Doyle looked pale and frightened. Slowly he walked back to where Doyle sat and crouched before him. (5)

The Doyle in this novel is one of the most infantalised I've encountered. The operation to snag Roscoe ends around page 41. The rest of the story details Doyle's breakdown and slow recovery from the sexual abuse he receives while undercover. He reacts more like one of the children he's rescued than any CI5 agent I can imagine; certainly unlike any Doyle I, at least, can imagine.

Doyle, however, is not the only problem in characterisation. All of them strike me as more caricatures than rounded characters. We get a Bodie painted in broad, reactionary strokes; a chummy Kate Ross prone to spouting extremely long paragraphs of dubious psychology as well as being a self-appointed matchmaker; and a Cowley who calls Doyle "Ray" when the chips are down.

Doyle's mental breakdown eventuates in an attack on Bodie, whom he believes he sees molesting a child--in a scene I considered ludicrous--followed by panicked flight:

His control lasted until he reached Cowley's office. Throwing the door open, he staggered into the room. Cowley looked up, startled, then his eyes widened as he took in Doyle's dishevelled appearance.

"Doyle ? Dear God, man..." He got up out of his chair and started to move round the desk. Doyle was shaking and looked on the verge of collapse. Tears streamed down his face.

" I've killed him."

Cowley stopped. " No....."

Doyle raised a hand to his temple and ran fingers through unkempt sweat-matted curls. He looked pleadingly towards Cowley and his hand reached out towards him. Cowley took another step forward.

" Ray....."

A look of absolute horror passed over Doyle's face as he whispered,

"Oh, dear God, help me....I've killed Bodie......"

Before Cowley could take another step, Doyle collapsed at his feet. (65-66)

As Doyle recovers, the story becomes a first-time tale, with melodrama and cliche attaching to each of his hesitant steps towards a sexual relationship with Bodie and the redefining of their lives together.

Readers who like a hurt/comfort wallow with Doyle as the helpless (if over-the-top) victim and who don't mind a poorly formatted text, might enjoy this novel. I found it nothing but annoying in presentation, style, characterisation, and story.

1995

I looked at a copy of SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN at MWC, and while the story looked extremely promising (better than the blurb posted here would have led me to think, in fact), the formatting was exceedingly off-putting. It's typed in a monospaced font, but justified, and not justified well. This means that the spacing of words is erratic, making the story hard to read. I don't know whether whoever made the printing decisions is proud of her layout, didn't know any better, or did what she thought was right; the upshot is that this a zine that is harder to read than it ought to be. Which is a shame.

1996

Suffer Little Children -- despite hitting several of my kinks, this was a serious loser.

I haven't been able to crack this one yet because the cover art put me off so badly. Not to mention the interior illos. Run away!

Clunky prose and plot holes you could drive a semi-articulated lorry through. Bleah.

I did find a zine I bought at a previous Media that I never finished reading. I was already having a bad weekend -- I got home Friday night and found that the cable was knocked out by a storm (I didn't get to tape X-Files!) and my 3 month old modem was dead.

Since I was already in a black pit of despair, I thought I'd read "Suffer the Children" a (purportedly) Bodie and Doyle novel by Tish. I knew this would be bad when I bought it, but I was hoping it would be bad in that Icky, sico sexy way (see Duet 6). I knew from the flyer that Doyle goes undercover to lure a pedophile out into the open, gets kidnapped and sexually abused for a period of time and needs Bodie's help to recover. Yes, I knew this and STILL bought it.

I know, the first question is, what would a pedophile want with Doyle? (the Bodie people are asking that; it isn't a big stretch for the Doylies...). The author thought of this and provided a history of disappearing boyfriends who resembled *ta dah* Ray Doyle. Naturally (and as it should ALWAYS be), Doyle is a virgin at the beginning of the story. To remedy this situation Cowley sends him to Bodie with a note pinned to his Y-fronts saying, "I give you the man, give me back the boy". Bodie, who has been pining for Doyle, reluctantly divests him of his virginity.

Next we get the completely illogical plot (a generous term) twists that get Doyle kidnapped and out of CI5's bumbling reach. Doyle goes to a restuarant Roscoe owns, looks pitiful, Roscoe picks him up, invites him to his house in the country and Doyle leaves with him.

Apparently, all the CI5 operatives are busy that night, because Cowley sees no reason to have Roscoe and Doyle followed. Hey, Cowley knew where Roscoe's house was, right? So if Roscoe said he was going there, then why should Cowley question this --- even if he is trying to locate a bunch of children and missing boy toys. Even more ridiculous is that BODIE doesn't know that Doyle has no backup until AFTER Doyle disappears.

So now we have Doyle in Roscoe's evil clutches. Now this part could have been fun for sick, pervos like me (and poor Billie walled away in the convent). But, Tish manages to make nonconsensual yucko sex about as dark as an episode of Adam-12. After two days of being repeatedly raped, Roscoe rewards Doyle with a bath during which Doyle gets turned on by Roscoe being "gentle" with him. Then he ties up Doyle, brings in his two houseboys (2 of the missing boy toys who are now "slaves") and the 3 of them have sex together and Doyle gets turned on (which is beyond me because I certainly didn't).

More unimvolving stuff... Doyle gets rescued... Doyle falls apart... Goes into therapy with Kate Ross (living at CI5 headquarters in the infirmary!!) and gets cured. part of the cure is realizing that he is bisexual, loves his partner, would have eventually realized he loved Bodie "that way" but his ordeal with Roscoe just brought it into the open.

He goes home to Bodie, they admnit they love each other -- Sorry, I can't go on.

There is so much wrong with this novel that fixing it isn't an option. What annoyed me the most was the complete lack of a coherent modus operendi for Roscoe. As this was set up, I couln't figure out why Cowley couldn't find him without dangling Doyle under his nose. A team of accountants and/or an even half-assed surveillance op could have "discovered" Roscoes secret house filled with 4 or 5 ex-boyfriend/slaves and 8 or 10 children. "yes, I live alone, but I'll need 7 quarts of mild and food for 20."

This is a variation of the reVENge plot where criminals with grudges go against all logic, plot elaborate schemes, spend oodles of money to get revenge on a cop who put them away. Or even worse, do all this to the guys partner because he wants him to "suffer". There was an Ellis Ward story that had the bad guy showing up at Doyle's flat for an evening of revenge. Bodie opens the door, Doyle isn't home, so the bad guy, who must have had a pressing engagement on his social calander, rapes Bodie instead.

I realize that 8/10s of fan writing is finding ways for bad things to happen to hunky guys, but why can't the bad guys have credible reasons to do the things they do? Why do we think that "bad guys", who are by definition probably lacking some measure of sensitivity, think that hurting a guys partner is worse than hurting the object of revenge?

End of rant.

I skimmed this novel in about 30 minutes. When I am on my deathbed, I shall want those 30 minutes back.

Anybody wanna buy a zine?

1997

One might think that reading only one page of a novel would make it a clear winner under the "got the least far into" criterion. However, there *is* a novel that beats this by a mile--"Suffer Little Children". The artwork alone made me toss it aside. Never read a word. So it should, by the standards for judging I used, be the one [zine] to be forever banished from existence.