Aha, I hear you on those "household name" writers that everyone seems to have read except you. Soooo many things I still need to get to. But yes, I'd say Snicket does a good job of really looking at consequences of choices and the fact that "good guys" vs. "bad guys" is more complicated than it at first appears, while not falling into "therefore everyone is horrible and by the end you're not going to like the heroes either" or turning the villains into poor babies who're just unloved and misunderstood. Very much, "cool story, still murder".

(Although if you're looking for explanation, you should go in knowing that while a lot of light is shed on certain things by the end, there are still significant swaths of backstory that're still no more than cryptic hints by the end, rather than everything being laid out and resolved. There's always a lot that's been going on "off screen" and I think the Netflix series is actually doing an even better job of showing some of that parallel action and complexity - which makes sense, given that the author's apparently got some significant involvement and the medium seems to be especially well suited to actually showing more of that interaction.)