OFFICIAL BOOK TWELVE DICUSSION THREAD.

[egad]

This has to do w/ the taxi driver.

It can't be Lemony because Lemony says he knows nothing about this person, so i think it might be the person from tww.

And yes, i do think that the woman in the trunk was woman who got Mr. W from the queequeg and she had just came from the pond/ocean which i think is passageway between them and got the sugarbowl which is in the front seat.

Just my thoughts

[peril]

egad said:

This has to do w/ the taxi driver.

It can't be Lemony because Lemony says he knows nothing about this person, so i think it might be the person from tww.
Just my thoughts

Actually, Lemony says, "I do know who the man was, and I do know where he went afterward, and I do know the name of the woman who was hiding in the trunk, and the type of musical instrument that was laid carefully in the back seat, and the ingredients of the sandwich tucked into the glove compartment, and even the small item that sat on the passenger seat, still damp from its hiding place..." on page 251.

Lemony seems to know quite a bit about this person.

However, I personally believe that the taxi driver is the person from TWW.

[dirkamoeba]

peril said:

Lemony seems to know quite a bit about this person.

However, I personally believe that the taxi driver is the person from TWW.

This is just my opinion:

The TPP driver was the TWW guy. At the beginning of the book, he was driving the taxi that was pursuing Kit and the Bauds, and the passenger was Lemony.

Later in the book, the passenger was the TGG swimming woman, or the TPP diving woman, or prthaps those two are the same person.

Where Lemony ended up is a mystery. Perhaps he was present at the Hotel Denoument during the events of the book, and was one of those who trusted the Bauds and therefore escaped.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

[tennisguru]

I doubt that the taxi driver is Lemony Snicket. With all the things he says about cigarrettes in the Slippery Slope, I don't think he'd be smoker. Plus, the picture at the beginning of the chapter doesn't really look like him, in my opinion.

When the book closes, does Olaf still think that Sunny is on his side for suggesting to burn down the hotel? If so, that could open up a wide vista of tantalizing plot lines, like Olaf asking Sunny to kill her siblings to show her loyalty or something to that effect.

[egad]

I think not. She is the one who presses all of the buttons so they could warn evryone about the fire, and since my friend is borrowing my copy of tpp, im not sure if olaf figures it out or not, i think it does. But still, that does not really balance out Sunny's deeds, so it is very possible if he thinks that. And, he might think that of violet, since she puts the drag shute on the boat. So...

Olaf could try to get both baudelaire sisters to kill klaus, or...i don't know! This is definatley the most tense book transition ever, and i thought it was tense when they were in the taxi w/ kit!

And i do hope that the ? is answered. It might belong to the ffp

[Jacques the Environmentalist]

The clues were allusions yes, and I liked all of them. Yes I did hope the ? submarine would be identified but while they're on the high seas seems as good a time as any...

I doubt the Baudelaires, no let me rephrase that, the baudelaires would NEVER kill one another just because Olaf said so.

[dirkamoeba]

This must have slipped my mind, and I'm a newbie, so cut me some slack-- what is this "?" that everyone's talking about?

[jman]

It's an unknown shape that showed up in TGG. Welcome to 667 Dark Avenue dirkamoeba.

[Antenora]

I think it'd be interesting to see Olaf try to convince one of the Baudelaires to kill the others. What if he threatened to kill them all, if (say) Violet didn't kill her siblings? Would two of the orphans be willing to sacrifice themselves so one might survive?

And while I doubt the Question Mark will be clearly identified(Lemony said he wouldn't tell us) we may get some vague information about it.

[Dear Dairy]

tocuna said:

Handler does seem to get confused about the timing of the last few books; .

"Last few"? More like "ALL." I don't think he's confused. Either there's some key to the timeline that we're missing, or it's intentionally confusing because Handler's manipulating events to suit himself. Or maybe he just doesn't care, as long as it's a good story.

I don't think Lemony is the cab driver either, but for a different reason. In TSS Lemony reveals that he is searching for the sugar bowl. If he had possession of it as a result of TPP events he'd surely say something about having it. The contents are vital to him, after all, and may be the only reason he's been researching the Bauds - they are/were his lead to the whereabouts of the sugar bowl. OK, maybe not the only reason, but possession of the sugar bowl is certainly one of his goals. If he had it, wouldn't he have left some cryptic message to Kit within TPP? At least, he wouldn't have simply passed over the fact as if it didn't matter. Would he?

A side note: The sugar bowl belongs to Esme, but that doen't necessarily mean the contents belong to her.

If Handler doesn't reveal the sugar bowl mystery in Book the Thirteenth, I'm going to camp out on his doorstep until he tells me. Anybody else want to come along?

[Gigi]

deardairy2 said:

If Handler doesn't reveal the sugar bowl mystery in Book the Thirteenth, I'm going to camp out on his doorstep until he tells me. Anybody else want to come along?

I'll come.

Maybe he will make mention of the sugar bowl in The Beatrice Letters

[SnicketFires]

I'll come, too.

ffwf said:

The Bertrand backgammon scene is on page 139.

And it might not have actually been published... It could just have been pages and pages of scribbled notes, hand-bound. But you're right - there hasn't been much time between TVV and TPP, and it probably wasn't enough. It's like Olaf's apparent light-speed travel at the beginning of TGG.

I noticed that too. In a matter of hours, Fernald and Fiona stole the submarine, and Carmelita got a new outfit and ship. I imagine there's more, but I have to go.

Oh, I just remembered: That quote in TGG, where Olaf said that he had all his associates at the Hotel D (Edit: page 193) There should have been more kids at the Hotel, as we should have expected the sinister duo sooner.

[dirkamoeba]

jman said:

It's an unknown shape that showed up in TGG. Welcome to 667 Dark Avenue dirkamoeba.

Ah, thanks. I completely forgot, though I knew it sounded familiar.

deardairy2 said:

I don't think Lemony is the cab driver either, but for a different reason. In TSS Lemony reveals that he is searching for the sugar bowl. If he had possession of it as a result of TPP events he'd surely say something about having it. The contents are vital to him, after all, and may be the only reason he's been researching the Bauds - they are/were his lead to the whereabouts of the sugar bowl. OK, maybe not the only reason, but possession of the sugar bowl is certainly one of his goals. If he had it, wouldn't he have left some cryptic message to Kit within TPP? At least, he wouldn't have simply passed over the fact as if it didn't matter. Would he?

But it's also possible that he or some other volunteer obtained the Sugar Bowl during TPP or Book the Thirteenth and took/used its contents, later discarding or losing the bowl itslef. In that case, while writing the books, Lemony may have been looking for the sugar bowl merely out of his obsessive need to locate evidence related to the lives of the Baudelaires.

[Jacques the Environmentalist]

Hm. He said in tss that he was heading for the Hotel Denouement. Either that means he was writing tss before the events of tpp, OR that he's heading to underwater hotel Denouement which is entirely possible and he may have merely added "Try to get us a room without ugly curtains" for comedic effect. *helpless shrug*

[Dear Dairy]

TSS p. 101: "I have at last learned the whereabouts of the evidence that will exonerate me." followed by a description of Kit's idea of using a small tea set item to hide something crucially important (generally accepted to refer to the sugar bowl).
P. 102: "I am on my way to the Valley of Four Drafts, in order to continue my research into the Baudelaire case. I hope also to retrieve the aforementioned evidence at last" indicating that he did not have the evidence at the time of the writing of TSS, and that it was important enough to him personally to risk getting a message to Kit via the book.
He didn't have the evidence then, he doesn't seem to have it now, perhaps he never gets possession of it. It's not the sugar bowl itself that's important, it's the contents. Even Esme indicates that she's interested in the sugar bowl for its contents, an item which is important enough that people have died and that would be of vital importance to the Snicket and Baud families. (I can't find the quote about that in TPP, but it was mentioned within the last few pages of this thread.)