So, Celyn and I cruised on to book 2, pausing only for breath. 
 This book sets a pattern, a formula, that is repeated in each of the books we've read so far. 
 The children move to a new place. 
 All the adults are idiots. 
 Count Olaaf arrives in disguise and at some point a selected member of his theatre troop will show up, also in disguise (someone may have been bumped off to make space for one or both of them). 
 The children see through his disguise in an instant. 
 The adults don't believe them. 
 Count Olaaf insinuates his way into their lives and gets them to refer to him by his assumed name (via some kind of threat). 
 Interesting words are introduced and defined amusingly in context by the narrator. 
 Sunny makes short random utterances that are interpreted by the narrator as lengthy and cogent observations. 
 The three children use their given skills (respectively inventor, bookworm, biter) to solve the problem of not letting Count Olaaf gain control of them. 
 At the end Mr Poe is called in and Olaaf's disguise is revealed. 
 Count Olaaf runs away while Mr Poe coughs then phones the police. 
 Rinse and repeat. 
 Because this is book 2, and because Lemony Snicket is an entertaining writer, the formula has not yet grown old. 
 Things get darker in this book. Actual murder is done. Olaaf repeatedly threatens the children with a knife and with death. 
 As the books progress there is a slow progression toward the cartoony and surreal. In this book though the action is still largely believable and the world recognizably 'real' - only the bizarre reptiles referred to in the reptile room take us toward make-believe, and only Sunny's contribution in 'biting rope into shorter lengths' takes us toward cartoony. 
 This is then, a well written and entertaining book that establishes a formula LS proceeds to beat to death every book hereafter (at least as far as we've read). Fortunately LS's skills mean that this isn't as painful experience as one might think. 
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