The Slippery Slope

The Slippery Slope (2003) by Lemony Snicket is the tenth novel in a series of children's books titled A Series of Unfortunate Events. The book follows three siblings, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, who, having lost their parents to a horrible fire, find themselves targeted by the villain Count Olaf, who seeks to steal their fortune. In The Slippery Slope, Violet and Klaus travel to the Mortmain Mountains to rescue their baby sister, Sunny, from the evil Count Olaf and his troupe of accomplices. The book was illustrated by Brett Helquist.

The Slippery Slope picks up where the previous installment, The Carnivorous Carnival, left off, with the two older Baudelaire children hurtling down a steep mountain in a runaway caravan. Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire has been captured by Count Olaf, his accomplice Esme Squalor, and the other members of their nefarious troupe of villains. Olaf is taking Sunny to the peak of Mount Fraught; while they travel, Sunny is forced to do the troupe's chores.

To escape the careening caravan, Violet uses her inventing skills to construct a shoot that allows them to safely depart the caravan before it falls off the edge of a steep cliff. She and Klaus escape, but the caravan falls down the cliff, leaving them with few clothes. They travel up the mountain to rescue Sunny, eventually finding a group of snow scouts, including Bruce, a man who helped their deceased Uncle Monty with his reptiles in the third book in the series; Carmelita Spats, a dreaded character from The Austere Academy; and one masked Snow Scout who won't reveal his identity.



The children spend time with the masked Snow Scout, who wakes them in the middle of the night and brings them up a chimney into the ruined headquarters of the VFD, a secret organization the Baudelaires’ believe must hold the clue to the whereabouts of their missing parents. In the VFD headquarters, the masked Snow Scout reveals that he is Quigley Quagmire, the lost sibling of two friends of the Baudelaire children, whom they thought had died in the fire that killed the Quagmire parents. Quigley, like the Baudelaires, is trying to reunite with his family.

Meanwhile, Sunny has been spying on Count Olaf while she is doing chores for the troupe. She learns that Count Olaf possesses something called the Snicket File, which Sunny believes contains information about the whereabouts of their parents. While doing chores, Sunny finds a device that makes green smoke, which she uses to send up a flare, hoping Klaus and Violet will see it.

Seeing the flare, Klaus, Violet, and Quigley construct a makeshift toboggan to climb to the top of Mount Fraught to rescue Sunny. They find Sunny, but she insists on remaining in the camp, because she believes she can spy on Olaf and get the information for which they have been searching. Violet reluctantly agrees to her plan, returning to the ruins of the VFD headquarters to make a new plan with Quigley and Klaus.



Finally, Klaus and Sunny arrange to trap Esme and ransom her for Sunny's return. At the last minute, however, they feel guilty about the plot and warn Esme not to fall into the trap. Olaf demands members of his troupe throw Sunny off a cliff, but, ultimately, they refuse and leave the troupe. Olaf tries to find Sunny but discovers she has been swept away by the Baudelaires who, along with Quigley, travel in a sled back down the mountain.

At the end of the book, Quigley and the Baudelaires are separated once more when they take their sled down a frozen waterfall, which shatters as they travel down it, splitting the group in two.

The Slippery Slope is the tenth book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, which begins with The Bad Beginning, and ends with the thirteenth book, The End. Playful and full of clues, the series has a snarky narrator who appears also in The Unauthorized Autobiography, a supplementary book to the series. Lemony Snicket is the author of a second series, All the Wrong Questions. The story of the Baudelaire children has appeared in one feature-length film and a Netflix mini-series, which was released in 2017. Lemony Snicket is the pen name of Daniel Handler, who writes books for children and adults. He is a best-selling author and the editor of a small press in San Francisco.