Who could that be at this hour? by Lemony Snicket

Ill. by Seth. Egmont, 2012.ISBN 9781405256216.
(Age: 10+) Recommended. Adventure. Lemony has been apprenticed to the unlovely S. Theodora Markson. From the start we are unsure why this has occurred but strange things do happen which the reader hopes will all be made clear by the end of the fascinating book. She books a room at the hotel at Stain'd-by-the-sea, where a burglary has taken place. She and Lemony have taken the assignment to get the statue back to its rightful owners. Theodora keeps reminding Lemony just how lucky he is to be with her, his chaperone, but berates him when things go awry as they inevitably do. Once at Stain'd they meet an extraordinary array of characters, from the amazing proprietor of the hotel, to Moxie trying in vain to reconstitute her parent's business of running the local newspaper, to the pair of police officers and their odious son, Stew.
Late one night, Theodora and Lemony break into the house on the hill, steal the statue and go hand in hand down the hawser to safety. But all is not as it seems, and when the police catch Lemony at Moxie's she wraps it in newspaper and sends Lemony off to post it away from prying eyes.
The next day Lemony finds he has been duped with a bag of coffee and so needs to start over again.
The first in the series, All the wrong questions, this book has an emphasis on words and their meanings, on phrases and sayings heard everyday, of idiotic conversations which make the reader laugh out loud, of people with the most extraordinary names and situations quite out of the ordinary. All the while Lemony narrates his tale, reminding us that he is asking all the wrong questions! At the end of this first book, we are none the wiser, but intrigued enough to eagerly wait the next volume in this new series.
Fran Knight