The Ersatz Elevator/Lemony Snicket

In the sixth installment of the series, Handler/Snicket starts getting all House of Leaves, as the orphans take up residence in a penthouse apartment of a building which contains a harrowingly long spiral staircase and an even more harrowing elevator shaft, as represented by two pages of soul-killingly black blankness. Their guardians for this book are the Squalors: Jerome is a kindhearted milquetoast and Esme is, well, evil. But a good, well-rounded kind of evil, which is a blessing since the narrative of the stories is formulaic (wonderfully so, but still) and Olaf's regular band of henchpeople has, by this point, started to wear a little thin. Onward to book seven! 259 pp.