File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents

File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents by Lemony Snicket is a case book for 10 year olds, and your reader is expected to do some of the work.

What happens

Thirteen small mysteries, a few pages each. Snicket turns up, asks his questions, announces that he knows exactly what has happened, and then makes you go and look up how he worked it out.

He never withholds anything. Every clue he gets, your reader gets at the same moment. That's the whole game.

Take the first one. Marguerite is looking after her father's little gold mine on her own while he's away, and the portraits in her living room keep coming off the wall.

Nothing has been stolen. The pictures aren't even damaged. They're found leaning against the wall underneath their own empty hooks, neat as you like.

That's the shape of most of them. Not a robbery or a body. Just a small thing that refuses to add up, and one detail sitting in plain sight that explains all of it.

Snicket is a child himself, an apprentice to a chaperone called S. Theodora Markson, and the two of them squabble constantly. In the first few pages they argue about burnt toast and about whether you are allowed to say the words secret organisation out loud.

He also defines the hard words as he goes, right in the middle of the sentence, which is part of the joke rather than a favour. Inane, he explains, is a word which here means pointless and dull.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is bone dry and a bit bleak. The town is emptying out, shops are boarded up, and nearly every adult is either useless or up to something. Nobody gets a hug.

A child who wants warmth and a happy crowd will find this chilly. A child who likes a narrator who says less than he knows, and gets a small laugh out of how flat he says it, will be delighted.

The short cases make it easy to pick up. One incident takes about ten minutes, so it works for a reader who doesn't want to start a whole novel tonight. It's also very good for the child who likes shouting the answer before the grown-up gets there.

Be ready for the arguing though. If they solve one and you didn't, you will hear about it.

What to read next

If thirteen cases leave them wanting the bigger story, Who Could That Be at This Hour starts the apprenticeship properly. Snicket is almost thirteen, saying an awkward goodbye to his parents in a grim tearoom, and five minutes later he's climbing out of a bathroom window on a folding ladder he hid there himself.