you aren't asking the right questions.

Pedantic. Indulgent. Self-referential.

And for those you who still think from the above I'm going to bash Lemony Snicket's latest series "All the Wrong Questions", think again. No, these are the exact qualities we've missed since the conclusion of "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" ended with its 13th (really 15th if we include the Autobiography & companion Beatrice Letters) book from 2006.

A very gradual first in a quartet prequel, our Mr. Snicket begins by relating his field apprenticeship at a mere 13 years old for an unnamed secret society and his subsequent unwilling involvement in a Maltese Falcon style noir. And since Who Could That Be At This Hour's a prequel, one doesn't have to have read ASOUE to join in on the mystery. As with most noir, we start with the water well above our heads in the deep end of the pool, everything being totally suspect as it most likely isn't what it seems, and you spend the time playing catch up and treading the rising level of danger along with our protagonist. Like ASOUE's 13 chapters per book, this volume ticks its tale off with that identical unlucky structure.

The same great voice & style of Mr Snicket, full of zingers & payoffs, plus the seemingly truthful obtuseness of the world and his stymied frustration at seeing it all too clearly while no one else around him does, contextualizes our baffled onrush into the maw of unseen dark doings. (Yes, my Gothics, this one's so for you.) It's the classic children's lit & young adult (which usually means "dumbed down mediocrity for the passably literate", but which instead here means "a gameful sophistication at play") backdrop trope of the incompetent adults versus the emotionally perceptive youths. That dichotomy isn't just used but made painfully self-aware in our narrator to win our empathy as readers, and recalls the ancient child in us all.

With great similes like "hands as soft as old lettuce" or "hair so black it made the night look pale", one imagines Snicket's pen dancing from line to skillful line in poetic gran jetes of associative thought.

A constant earmark of the ASOUE was presenting the vocab, and it's present here:

"'What does kowtowing mean?'

'To behave in an obsequious manner.'

'I could play this game all night, Mr. Snicket. What does obsequious mean?'"

Or, more reflexively:

"He's a terrible man. He's despicable. He's loathsome, a word here which means terrible and despicable."

(Lexical boomerang to yo' face!)

[Ooh, bats & hair ribbons! You know you like them!]

Brett Helquist's art is absent, instead using black & white solids paneled with blue by Seth (no last name? Tres mystérieux!). While Seth has great graphic design sensibilities that remind one of Jaime Hernandez' work, one misses the pairing with Helquist's more line driven tension, which takes some cues from Edward Gorey. But that's apples & oranges, fruits here which aren't really fruits but mild discomfort at an unanticipated change.

[Hemlock Tearoom! You kill me, Snicket! *drinkee drinkee* *erk!*]

The legitimate critique of Mr. Snicket's offerings is that the plot never wraps up completely, that even if we were asking all the right questions, he wouldn't provide all the answers, right or otherwise. We suspect that even he doesn't have them, that the voice and flavour of his characters and environs are more mood and anxiety driven than clearly causal or sensibly linear, and if the story's final destination were to deliver complete solutions those facts might ultimately undermine any emotional resolution the climax delivers. Still, that really does leave one wanting. (Yes, I wrote a more angsty than thankful letter to our author, a.k.a. Daniel Handler, enumerating my many inquiries when I'd finished the 2,000+ pages [!] of ASOUE, but maybe I wasn't asking the right questions ... .) Perhaps, like life, it isn't ever meant to give up all its infinite mysteries. (Or he's totally mucking about at our expense? 'Fess up, Snicket!)

[The second ATWQ installment, When Did You See Her Last?, came out October 2013, and I'm sticking it in my shopping cart right now.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.