Lemony Snicket goes “noir” and plays the accordion

Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), author of the hugely popular 13-volume Series of Unfortunate Events for children and young adults, chatted yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air with host Terry Gross. Just released is his new book Who Could That Be at This Hour?, a noir mystery, the first of the All the Wrong Questions series and a prequel to the first series. Moving away from the gothic genre, Handler decided it was about time for kids to have a noir mystery of their own to enjoy, with femme fatale and trench coated detective, and dialogue that pays homage to those wonderful scenes from The Maltese Falcon and the like. Handler also delighted listeners with his singing, accompanying himself on the accordion. Why the accordion? Says Handler, “… I’m one of the few people in the history of the world to take up the accordion basically in order to meet women.” He added, “And the accordion is well, I mean, one nice thing is that if you play the accordion you’re probably the best accordion player anybody knows.”

Barbara L.