The Penultimate Peril has 353 pages and is by Lemony Snicket. It is about the Baudelaire`s mission about rescuing the sugar bowl, a valuable piece of information vital to the survilal of The Volunteer Fire Department a mysterious organization bent on supressing treachery in the world. because they are being searched by the police for false accusations made by a disguised Count Olaf another enemy of the Baudelaires. In the story they are supposed to study the occupants of the Hotel Denouement, the last safe place of the V.F.D. Another objective of them is to await a Thursday, the day the sugar bowl is rumored tobe delivered to the hotel. On Thursday Justice Strauss take him prisoner. he then finds out there was no sugar bowl and he escapes. with the baudelaires he gets a boat and burns down the hotel while drifting out to sea.