This children’s book by “Lemony Snicket” has very little to do with the original “Series of Unfortunate Events,” either in content or quality.  The only familiar character is Snicket himself, who is amazingly characterless.  There are many other people in this series of 13 mini-mysteries, but they are all entirely forgettable.  The only virtue of the book is the familiar word-play, which is a lot of fun.  There’s also a fair amount of rather random information thrown in, such as about kinds of newts, but after a while that gets tiresome. The unabridged audiobook is performed by 13 readers, some of whom will be known to listeners of public radio in the USA: Terry Gross, Sarah Vowell, and Ira Glass are among them, and there’s pleasure in hearing them read silly stories.  But there’s no suspense here, because the puzzles are not particularly interesting and we never have much of a reason to care about the characters.  It is a relief that the book is short: the audio version lasts about 3 hours.  This book may appeal to children who like clever word play, but it is clearly trading on the reputation of the stories about the Baudelaire siblings.

© 2014 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York