The Reptile Room
By Graham Turner
The Reptile Room starts where The Bad Beginning left off, so make sure you read The Bad Beginning first.
After the Baudelaire’s encounter with Count Olaf, they needed someone to take care of them. So Mr.Poe brought them to another distant relative. He brought them to their uncle Monty, who was an explorer. He discovered lots of snakes and brought them back to The Reptile Room to examine them.
Uncle Monty’s old assistant had died on one of his expeditions, so he had got a new one, Stephano.
But of course, nothing goes right for the Baudelaire’s and he really is Count Olaf.
Uncle Monty was going to go to Peru on an expedition, and the Baudelaire’s were going too. Uncle Monty thinks that Stephano is a spy and is going to steal everything that he discovers, so he rips up one of the tickets, so that Stephano cannot go to Peru.
But when the Baudelaires find proof that Stephano is really Count Olaf, they find Uncle Monty dead, as pale as a ghost. They think Stephano has murdered Uncle Monty, but there are teeth marks on him, so everyone else thinks he was bitten. Stephano starts driving the Baudelaires to the docks so that he can take them to Peru to harm them. But then, out of the blue, he takes his eyes off the road and crashes into Mr.Poe, who was bringing the Baudelaire’s luggage to Uncle Monty’s house. They tell him what has happened, and Count Olaf (Stephano) rings a doctor and they return to the house.
The doctor says that Uncle Monty was bitten by the Mamba Du Mal.
Violet sneaks into Stephano’s room and looks for proof that Stephano murdered Uncle Monty. She makes a lock pick and opens up his suitcase and finds…. venom from the Mamba Du Mal, a syringe, and white makeup (to make him look pale). She puts all the proof together and she finds out that Stephano had injected the snake’s venom into Uncle Monty with the syringe and pricked him using the syringe. Then Stephano covered up his tattoo using the makeup.
Violet explained all this to Mr Poe, but suddenly, when Mr Poe was about to arrest Stephano, he ran out the door with the doctor and escapes in a car. He vows to get revenge. I’m sure he will in the third book.
