Twelve-year-old Emma Graham continues her investigation into the disappearance of the Slade baby twenty years earlier, a case that is shaped by the child's father's unexpected appearance and the arrival of a charismatic drifter.
The residents of Pickax are thrilled to see the moldering Pickax Hotel restored and reopened under new ownership, but when one of the first guests turns up dead, Qwilleran and his snooping Siamese cats are soon prowling around for clues.
Sadly, this audiobook presents the next-to-last chronicle of the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, and it is next-to-first in its supply of misery, despair, and unpleasantness.