Skulduggery Pleasant
Derek Landy

Stephanie notices the stranger with the overcoat, sunglasses and frizzy hair at her uncle's funeral; the next time they meet, he's saving her life.

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant, skeleton detective, fighting to save the world from wizard-gone-to-the-dark-side, Nefarian Serpine. Stephanie enters Skulduggery's shadowy nether-world and learns about the Ancients, the Faceless Ones, and the Sceptre they all seek. What's more, she'd choose life on the edge with wise-cracking Skulduggery to her old existence any day!

There's non-stop action, a striking cast of spooky characters, spine-tingling horror and tension in this book. With smart, snappy dialogue, and the overlap between real and supernatural worlds, this is a gripping, funny, spooky read.

Derek Landy
Skulduggery Pleasant

Before writing his children’s story about a sharply-dressed skeleton detective, Derek Landy wrote the screenplays for a zombie movie and a murderous thriller in which everybody dies.

As a black belt in Kenpo Karate he has taught countless children how to defend themselves, in the hopes of building his own private munchkin army. He firmly believes that they await his call to strike against his enemies (he doesn’t actually have any enemies, but he’s assuming they’ll show up, sooner or later).

Derek lives on the outskirts of Dublin, and the reason he writes his own biography blurb is so that he can finally refer to himself in the third person without looking pompous or insane.

(Page 48)

"Stephanie stared at the door, trying to make sense of the impossible.

"Well," Skulduggery said, "that's something you don't see every day."

She turned. When his hat came off, his hair had come off too. In the confusion all she had seen was a chalk-white scalp, so she turned expecting to see a bald albino maybe. But no. With his sunglasses gone and his scarf hanging down, there was no denying the fact that he had no flesh, he had no skin, he had no eyes and he had no face.

All he had was a skull for a head."

Extract taken from Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy published by HarperCollins