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After just missing the opportunity to rescue their friends Duncan and Isadore, the remaining two Quagmire triplets, from the fortune-grubbing clutches of their evil uncle Count Olaf and his protege and partner Esme Squalor, the Baudelaire orphans find themselves very nearly in the middle of nowhere. Their bumbling guardian Mr. Poe, having run out of available relatives to foist the children upon, has found an entire town willing to take in Violet, Klaus and Sunny (it takes a village...).
And what a village. V.F.D. is a crow-covered desolation likely to be mistaken for a desert mirage, with an atmosphere straight out of a Stephen King novel. Sent to live with Hector the handyman on the edge of town, the children almost immediately find a scrap of poesy under the crows' nighttime roost that quickens their hope of finding the Quagmires once more.
When a volunteer searching for the children by the name of Jacques Snicket is mistaken for Count Olaf by the easily misled townspeople, he is jailed and found dead the next morning. Suddenly the Baudelaires are murder suspects, and the detective building the case against them is none other than the dreaded Count Olaf in disguise.
Enticing glimpses of the real relationship between narrator Lemony Snicket and the Baudelaire orphans (not to mention the mysterious, unfortunate Beatrice) help keep this middle book in the Series of Unfortunate Events humming along and readers itching to get on with the next installment in the saga.
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The Vile Village (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 7)