The Beatrice Letters

The Beatrice Letters is a short book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author, Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler). It consists of twelve items of correspondence between Lemony Snicket and Beatrice Buadelaire, who is apparently the sister of Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire, and a letter to his editor. While it is difficult to make any sense at all out of this, frankly, bizarre collection, Snicket does display his love of whacky definitions and wordplay like puns and anagrams. The items include calling cards, a poem, a telegram and letters: typed, hand-written and of the punch-out variety, this last allowing for plenty of games with homonyms. Separating these items are colour-plates of shipwrecks, caves and certain relevant(?) objects. There is probably some cleverness in there somewhere, but not enough to justify the price unless you are a die-hard Series of Unfortunate Events fan. Disappointing.