S. Theodora refuses to tell anyone what the S in her name stands for. But all of her following statements begin with S, such as 'Standing next to me is my apprentice'. There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a theft. I was living in the town, and I was hired to investigate the theft, and I thought the girl had nothing to do with it. I was almost thirteen and I was wrong. I was wrong about all of it. I should have asked the question 'Why would somebody say something was stolen when it was never theirs in the first place?' Instead, I asked the wrong question — four wrong questions, more or less." Dude, Where's My Reward?: Rather than thank them for saving her life, Sally Murphy yells at Lemony and Moxie for asking about who tried to drown her. In Shouldn't You Be in School?, she enrolled into Wade Academy and adopted an alias made from an anagram of her own name: Filene N. Gottlin. Exact Words: Lemony promised to help Ellington, and her father. He views feeding him to the Bombinating Beast as doing just that.

All The Wrong Questions is the prequel novel to the main story arc of A Series of Unfortunate Events. What we know so far This is a fantastic series! The best of the best, I have never read a book like this: it is very well-written, with surprising characters and plots--this noir mystery series is by far the best series I will probably ever read.Mythology Gag: In the fourth book, Lemony makes a guess that he'll probably grow out of saying 'A word which here means-'. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahme: In Chapter Eleven, Lemony recommends the book by name to the Bellerophon brothers. LS pushes Hangfire into the BB's mouth and he is eaten. Ellington is understandably pissed off with LS (and you can't really blame her for that). LS's friends all ghost him after the murder. The Mitchems blame Ellington for Qwerty's murder, no matter who tells them it was actually their son who did it.

And most significantly, the Great Unknown introduced in The Grim Grotto is hinted to be the Bombinating Beast, a Cthulhu-esque creature that's legendary in the town. Parental Abandonment: Lemony's "parents" at the beginning of the book were just pretending to be his. He mentions several times that his real parents can't help. Dashiell Qwerty is named after Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, and the QWERTY keyboard layout. It also seemed to have little hidden details; V.F.D (The 'good' organization) and the Inhumane Society (The 'bad' organization) are noted to be quite similar: the agents in both sneak around doing strange plots that no one knows about, yet for some reason, V.F.D is good and the Inhumane Society evil. Four Is Death: Has four installments, to go with the main series' thirteen. It doesn't have four chapters, however, but the usual thirteen.City with No Name: Sort of; the majority of the plot takes places at Stain'd-by-the-Sea, but the city that Lemony came from and often refers to is never named. Book Two continues this trend, with the opening illustration being the same girl trying to open a hatch (with the letters VFD on it, no less) and the end is her getting arrested. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder: In Chapter Six, while waiting for Theodora at the lighthouse, Lemony reads a book about a family in a big woods "who liked to make things."

LS illegally gets onto a train called 'The Thistle Of The Valley'. He does this because this is the train that is transporting prisoners from Stain'd-by-the-Sea to the city. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White: In Chapter Eight, while in the library, Lemony reads a book "about someone who was a true friend and a good writer (Charlotte) who lived on a bloodthirsty farm."Qwerty smiled, but it was sad around the edges. "No," he said. "It's a matter of handcuffs," and then the police arrived. The Letter, a play by W. Somerset Maugham: In Chapter Eight, Lemony sees an advertisement for a play performed at the Stain'd Playhouse, where Sally Murphy plays Leslie Crosbie. One day, Ellington returned home from school to find that her father wasn't home. In the morning, she received a call from a man who called himself Hangfire, who told her that he'd kidnapped her father. She spent the next six months traveling and searching for her father and researching him and Hangfire, discovering that he'd kidnapped a number of people for his plans. She took along with her a music box of jazz music that her father used to always carry with him, that he left behind the day he disappeared.

Homage: While the previous series was heavily inspired off of Gothic literature, this series is a tribute to Film Noir detective fiction, especially the The Maltese Falcon, which the first books greatly resembles, and whose MacGuffin is constantly referenced the Bombinating Beast statue. Ellington Feint: a mysterious girl with green eyes and a love of coffee. She wants the Bombinating Beast so that she can trade it with Hangfire in return for her father, Armstrong. August 14, 2012) "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" Free Preview Edition (The First 4 Chapters) - Books on Google Play Play.Google.com. Retrieved August 16, 2012 The first batch of the books were released with cover art and illustrations by Seth. The first book was released on October 23 2012, and the second on October 15 2013. A book set inbetween the second and third stories, File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents, was dropped on April 1 2014 as a reference to April Fools' Day, while the third book dropped on September 30 of the same year, and the final book was published on September 29 2015. The sky was getting lighter and I was whistling the tune Ellington had played me, first on a Hangfire phonograph and then on a music box her father had given her. She had not told me the name of the tune. It was a mystery, like what the S stood for in Theodora's name. I kept walking, with nothing but Solitude for company. 'Solitude' is a fancy name for being all by yourself. It's not a bad name, I thought.

The Tunnels

In 2018, an alternate cover of Who Could That Be at This Hour? was released, featuring a more realistic style of illustration, though the inside of the book remained the same. The blurb on the book included a reference to Netflix, which was at the time releasing a series based on A Series of Unfortunate Events, leading some to believe that the new cover release may be predating a prequel adaptation; no such plans have been confirmed, however, and neither have any subsequent books been released with new appearances. The Butler Did It: Subverted. He's the mastermind, but he's not really a butler and he didn't do it personally, as Lemony points out.