Skulduggery Pleasant

Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant is a spooky, very funny adventure for 11 year olds about a girl, a creaky old house and a detective who turns out to be a skeleton.

What happens

Stephanie Edgley is twelve. Her uncle Gordon wrote horror stories, and he dies at his desk seven words into a sentence of his new book (which feels like a very Gordon way to go).

At the funeral she notices a tall man standing under a tree. He's bundled up in a coat, a scarf, a hat and enormous sunglasses on a warm afternoon. The next day he turns up at the reading of the will too.

The will is a treat. Gordon leaves his grabby brother Fergus and sister-in-law Beryl a car, a boat and a brooch without a single jewel on it. Stephanie gets almost everything else, house and all, once she turns eighteen.

Then her mum's car breaks down and Stephanie talks her way into a whole night alone in Gordon's house. Would your reader have stayed? The phone rings. A man wants to know her name. A few minutes later he's hammering on the front door.

It's worth knowing that this part is properly frightening. The man smashes in through a window, grabs Stephanie by the throat and says he'll kill her. Her rescuer shoots him. Later on, the rescuer calmly explains how he died himself, a very long time ago, and what was done to his body afterwards. That's all in the first few chapters.

If your reader gets jumpy at night, this might be one to read together. If they love a real fright with a joke straight after it, they'll be hooked.

Because the jokes really do come straight after. The stranger from the funeral loses his hat, his wig and his sunglasses in the fight, and underneath there's nothing but a skull. And then he's mostly worried about the door. He makes her a cup of tea with lots of sugar. He admits the head isn't even his (he won it in a poker game).

Stephanie has never fainted in her life, and then she does. Once she's up again she wants to know how he talks without a tongue and whether he has a brain. When he tries to leave without her, she takes his hat hostage.

That back and forth, in a little seaside town in Ireland, is the best thing about it.

What to read next

If they'd like another twelve-year-old who isn't remotely fazed by a hidden magical world, try Artemis Fowl. Artemis is hunting for a mysterious Book, with an enormous bodyguard carrying far too many weapons, and the trail leads him to a fairy.