Heard: "Why Is This Night Different Than All Others?" by Lemony Snicket.

Heard: Why Is This Night Different Than All Others? by Lemony Snicket, 2015, Overdrive download.

Snicket's final report on his time in Stain'd-by-the-Sea. You are better off reading the first novels; the story will make more sense when read in order.

Lemony is told to go to sleep early by his chaperon S. Theodora Markson. Lemony knows something is afoot, he fakes slumber, and when Markson slips out he follows. It's late at night and the usually empty streets of Stain'd-by-the-Sea are even emptier. Lemony follows Markson into the local department store where Markson steals an outfit. The onto the train station where the train to The City is waiting to depart.

This night is the planned transfer of both the local librarian, Dashiell Qwerty, and Lemony's would be girly-friend, Ellington Feint. Qwerty has been set-up to take the fall for arson and murder (well, maybe not murder, I do not recall exactly). Feint is up for something-else-I-don't-recall from all her time doing the bidding of notorious villain Hangfire. Lemony tries to talk his way onto the train and fails.

Lemony gets Frick and Frack (cannot recall those cahracter names either) to taxi him to a spot where he can jump abosrd the moving train and into Moxie Mallahan's compartment. Things start happening.

Qwerty is murdered. Lemony is deeply saddened and angered at the murder of a librarian. Especially since a great librarian as Qwerty.  Lemony starts to investigate and some mysteries that carried over from previous novels are resolved.

There is much sadness from the death, from another killing, from finding out people are not who they seem. Teenage Lemony continues to discover that adults behave wrongly and cannot always be trusted.


Comments:
1. Semi-colon!
2. Deep library and librarian love by Snicket.
3. More 13-year-old-kids-on-their-own fantasy. Old enough to see adult freedom and be adventurous. Young enough to not worry about employment, bills, housing.
4. Lemony is still the hard-boiled private eye working by his own ethics and morality. Lemony does his duty even though it will forever split him from Ellington, or keep him from rescuing his sister from prison.
5. Snicket does not skip over the evil and bad parts of life. He doesn't dwell on them either. People are killed but Snicket won't detail blood and gore either.
6. More children's and YA literature references. Snicket and Co. have brief discussion on plot and character of some novels. I sometimes figure out the titles.