Skulduggery Pleasant is a detective who died and then came back as a talking moving fully-aware skeleton. His best friend Gordon this suddenly of a massive heart attack and Gordon's 12yo niece, Stephanie, is shocked to discover she did is the sole beneficiary of his estate huge. Skulduggery therefore gets something from the will and it is in fact the thesis circumstances skeleton detective and Stephanie meet up. The two become partners after Stephanie is attacked by strange characters looking for a key and skulduggery comes to her rescue.
Stephanie soon discovers a world of good and evil wizards and at intense power struggle being acted out. So in this respect, there are quite a bit of Harry Potter-type incidents going on in the story (Which obviously is not original). But what saves Skulduggery Pleasant from being another Potter-type rip-off Is that Landy has Constructed some really great characters: such as Book Collector China Sorrows, snappy tailor Ghastly Bespoke and sword-wielding Tanith Low. A lot of humor is so injected into the book and skulduggery is just great.
I highly recommend this. I can not wait for the sequel Which comes out in early of 2008.