Boston Bomber is not Lemony Snicket

We Are Pirates

Daniel Handler

Bloomsbury, NY 2015

This book is not part of the Lemony Snicket series but the new adult novel by the author of those books. It is a great read.

Handler has human compassion, a sense of word play, and the ability to keep us on the edge of our seats about the outcome of the narrative.   We Are Pirates is an adventure that goes wrong.  The girls in their early teens who decide to become pirates in San Francisco Bay are a wonderful invention.  I read the book as the trial of the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, comes to a close and he is found guilty.  We now await the penalty phase.  The girls in this book are lost in a world of their own romantic imagination.  Unfortunately it costs others their lives.  The argument Daniel Handler makes in the book is emotionally congruent with the argument the defense lawyers of the Tsarnaev case are making for their client.  Handler should have been a defense lawyer.