The conclusion of this book was much smarter and more believable then the first, making it more satisfying. At one point in this book, Snicket wishes that he could tell a different story or at least have a different outcome. He even suggests that you close the book and imagine a happy ending and never read the rest of this horrifying story.

Book the Third: The Wide Window

Next up for the Baudelaire orphans is a stay with their Aunt Josephine, who always corrects people's grammar and punctuation, including Sunny, who can't make intelligible sounds yet. Aunt Josephine lives high on a mountain in a house supported by unsafe-looking stilts. The house overlooks Lake Lachrymose, which she is scared of because she lost her husband Ike in it because he didn't wait an hour after eating before going in the water. He didn't get cramps, as you would expect; Lachrymose Leeches who could still smell the food on him attacked and killed him.

Aunt Josephine is scared of everything including the stove so the children have to eat cold food. Snicket makes mention of how silly it is to be scared of some of the things Aunt Josephine is scared of like realtors. He notes that you should only be scared of real scary things like monsters under your bed.

In town the children run into Count Olaf who is disguised as Captain Sham, which in this case doesn't mean "a trick that deludes" because the children see through his disguise immediately. Aunt Josephine meets Captain Sham and finds him to be charming, which is bad news for the children.

One night it appears as if Aunt Josephine has jumped out of a window and committed suicide. She left a note behind which turns over the responsibility of the children to Captain Sham. Klaus looks at the letter and notices all the writing errors in it. When he tries to point this out, Violet doesn't listen to him this time, which is out of character and only done to force events in a certain direction. It's similar to the same way that Mr. Poe doesn't accept the children's theory that Sham is Olaf after they were the ones who pointed out previously in The Reptile Room that Stephano was Olaf. The one saving grace for Mr. Poe was that he did ask to look at Sham's ankle to see if the eye tattoo was there, finding only a wooden peg leg.