When Did You See Her Last?
All the Wrong Questions, 2
Lemony Snicket
Art by Seth
Little, Brown and Company, 2013
In this, the second in a series of 4 books, our main character has to discover what has happened to a missing girl. He’s still in the dying town, Stain’d by the Sea, mulling over recent events and is briefly reunited with the Bombinating Beast, but once again it slips through his fingers.
Main Characters
*Lemony Snicket, still almost 13-year old boy who has been in Stain’d by the Sea for weeks and has almost given up on finding his friend/nemesis, Ellington Feint, who stole the Bombinating Beast from him. He continues to worry about his friend in the city (of course we now know that this friend is his sister – but what happened to their parents?). And he tries to solve the mystery of the missing girl.
*Moxie Mallahan, journalist friend of Lemony who lives in a lighthouse with her father. She still drags her typewriter around with her everywhere to make notes and as frustrating as it is for her to work with Snicket, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Secondary Characters
*Dr. Flammarion, ⇓ strange apothecary to Mr. & Mrs. Knight; he keeps them heavily drugged with laudanum, but for what unscrupulous reason?
⇐*Miss Cleo Knight, teen-aged daughter of wealthy parents, Mr. & Mrs. Knight, the owners of Ink, Inc, goes missing one day. Her parents don’t notice (thanks to Dr. Flammarion) so twin housekeepers Zora and Zada ⇓
contact Lemony & Theodora to find her. Cleo is a world-class chemist with a brilliant idea to save her town, but will she be allowed to develop it before the worst happens?
*Nurse Dander, she comes into the picture late into the book but she’s good with a knife and ends up hurting one of our characters!
Continuing Characters
*S. Theodora Markson, still Lemony’s chaperone, still an inept investigator, still declaring the case is over when it’s just begun.
⇐*Ellington Feint, still Lemony’s friend/nemesis who went missing in the last book with the Bombinating Beast statue and appears in this book in a very unexpected place!!
*Hangfire, still the main nemesis of Lemony’s, still creating chaos wherever he goes, still we don’t meet him directly – or do we???
*Pip and Squeak, still tooling around town in their father’s taxi (really, does the man ever work?)
*Dashiell Qwerty, still working in the library, organizing and resorting the books
So this is the second reading of this book. After I finished it the first time I decided not to read the others until they all came out. The last one come out this past September so I waited 2 years to read the entire series (which isn’t anything new – I waited 4 years to read the entire Heroes of Olympus series at once – sort of like binge watching tv, I like to binge read!). Anyway, I liked the book better the second time around because I was able to absorb more of the madness that is Lemony Snicket. I’m also used to his world again so all the craziness that exists doesn’t seem like a stretch at all. This is a great series of mysteries but if you’re a fan of straight-forward text then you might want to stay away from this convoluted, twisty-turny, rollercoaster, bumper-cars and falling-over-Niagara-Falls-in-a-barrel style of writing! I love it!!!
Rating 4 out of 5 paws!
Reviewer: Toby
UK Cover:
Quotable Lemony
Library of Cats 