Daniel Handler
About Author
Daniel Handler was born in 1970 and grew up in San Francisco, where he now lives. He attended Lowell High School and then graduated from Wesleyan University in 1992.
His parents met at the Opera. His mother, Sandra Handler Day, was an opera singer and Daniel also sang opera in the 80's with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. His father, Lou Handler, was an accountant who had fled from Germany as a child during the war.
Daniel Handler wrote the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events (under the pen name of Lemony Snicket), a collection of books for children, and three books for adults: Basic Eight (based on a true story of a teenaged girl who commits murder), Watch Your Mouth (a melodramatic satire of family life), and Adverbs. He has also written a novel for young adults, Why We Broke Up,
He also wrote the screenplay for the films A Series of Unfortunate Events, Kill the Poor, and Rick.
In 2012 the first in a new series for children, All the Wrong Questions, was published. The first book is called Who Could That be at This Hour?
Interview
WHO COULD THAT BE AT THIS HOUR: ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS
EGMONT PRESS
OCTOBER 2012
Who Could That be at This Hour? is the first in a new four-book series, All the Wrong Questions, by Lemony Snicket (author Daniel Handler).
We first met Lemony Snicket in the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which the adult Snicket follows the fortunes (or misfortunes) of the Baudelaire children. The series has sold some 60m copies worldwide.
The latest series goes back in time to feature Lemony Snicket as a young 13 year old boy and beginning his apprenticeship as an investigator.
Snicket is apprenticed to a rather incompetent detective, S Theodora Markson, and his first assignment is to help her solve the theft of a statue, the Bominating Beast, which the criminal Hangfire is also trying to get his hands on.
Author Daniel Handler started to plan the new series while he was still writing A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is a take on gothic novels.
While he was writing the Lemony Snicket books, he began to take interest in film noir and writers like Raymond Chandler and how they could operate within childhood. "I started to think about Lemony Snicket as a young man participating in a noir'ish world," says Handler. "Then I put it on the back burner and let it percolate and read some more noir novels."
All the Wrong Questions begins in Stain'd-by-the-Sea, a faded seaside town reflective of the noir genre. Handler says, "I probably chose a faded seaside town because of the drive I take to various seaside towns near me, but also because so much noir takes place in blue-collared towns at various stages of economic collapse, which is tied to the moral collapse of the characters; it felt pregnant with possibilities."
Stain'd-by-the-Sea will remain the locale for the whole series. "Unlike in A Series of Unfortunate Events, where I had no idea what the location would be for the next book, in this one I know and I had to plan it out beforehand. I even tried to draw a map of the town, although my cartography skills are sadly lacking," says Handler.
In each of the books, Lemony Snicket will investigate a particular crime; in book one it is the theft of the Bominating Beast while the second book is about a kidnapping. The mystery of the Bominating Beast will feature each book until the mystery is solved. Until then, each book will end in a cliffhanger.
While readers, and the town, will remain in the dark about the mystery until the very end, Handler knows that Lemony Snicket solved the mystery the minute he held the statue. "One of the things I like about film noir is that the detective quite often knows more than he tells the viewer," Handler adds.
Ellington Feint, a girl whose father has been kidnapped by the criminal Hangfire and who is trying to steal the Bominating Beast statue to free him, replaces the traditional 'femme fatale' of film noir. Handler says, "Since I can't have her as an agent hanging out at night clubs, she is instead a girl who will do anything to get her father back. She turns out to be quite treacherous while Lemony Snicket wants to keep to the moral high ground."
Handler admits that writing a detective novel was harder than he had expected. "With A Series of Unfortunate Events I could make a number of improvisations as I wrote but this entire series had to be conceived before I started writing book one. It has made me take my hat off to all detective writers. I have always asked myself, how hard can it be to write a detective novel? without appreciating how cunningly conceived they are."
While he enjoyed revisiting the character, Lemony Snicket, it also presented challenges says Handler. "It has been both harder and easier than writing it the first time around. I definitely felt challenged to feel I wasn't repeating myself, but also there's something about writing Snicket that comes naturally to me so it was nice to do that for the first time in a while.
"I liked him narrating A Series of Unfortunate Events as a lonely, bereft gentleman, but I wondered what he was like as a 13 year old boy. Snicket is more hot-headed and less resigned when he's younger but being less resigned doesn't get him into any less trouble."
Another challenge was to keep the ideas fresh. "Lemony Snicket was innovative when it was published but children's literature has become much more fun and complex and so I had to approach this series differently."
All The Wrong Questions will be both a detective story and a story of Lemony Snicket's development as a person. "I think that all good children's books are the arc of childhood writ large," says Handler. "In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the children are trying to work out why the world is as wicked as it is and in this series, Lemony Snicket is trying to solve a sinister mystery without becoming sinister himself. Investigating a rush of crimes in a small town will affect you in a certain way."
