Meet the great Skulduggery Pleasant: wise-cracking detective powerful magician master of dirty tricks & burglary (in the name of the greater good of course). Oh yeah. & dead. Then there's his sidekick Stephanie. She's...well she's a twelve-year-old girl. With a pair like this on the case evil had better watch out... So you won't keep anything from me again?" He put his hand to his chest. " Cross my heart & hope to die." " Okay then. Though you don't actually have a heart " she said. "I know." " And technically you've already died." "I know that too." " Just so we're clear." Stephanie's uncle Gordon is a writer of horror fiction. But when he dies & leaves her his estate Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror it certainly wasn't fiction. Pursued by evil forces intent on recovering a mysterious key Stephanie finds help from an unusual source
- the wisecracking skeleton of a dead wizard. When all hell breaks loose it's lucky for Skulduggery that he's already dead. Though he's about to discover that being a skeleton doesn't stop you from being tortured if the torturer is determined enough. & if there's anything Skulduggery hates it's torture... Will evil win the day? Will Stephanie & Skulduggery stop bickering long enough to stop it? One thing's for sure: evil won't know what's hit it."