by Lemony Snicket
.
The book starts off where The Grim Grotto
left off. The Baudelaires are traveling with pregnant Kit Snicket in a taxi to the Hotel Denouement and after serving them some lunch, she leaves the Baudelaires to start their new jobs as flâneurs, with concierge uniforms to use as disguises. The siblings meet Frank and Ernest, the identical twin managers.
Richard Wright, an American novelist of the realist school, asks a famous unfathomable question in his best-known novel, Native Son. "Who knows when some slight shock," he asks, "disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling?" 
"Burn down hotel!" Sunny said.
"Never mind what you were doing," Olaf said. "You're fired!""You can't fire me!" Esme growled. "I quit!""Well, you can leave by mutual agreement," Olaf grumbled and then with another succinct "Ha!" he lifted the harpoon gun and pointed it at Dewey Denouement.