Derek Landy

Derek Landy is far too modest to talk about any awards or accolades his books may have won. He will not, for instance, mention the fact that his first book, Skulduggery Pleasant, won the Red House Children’s Book Award, or that his second, Playing With Fire, won an Irish Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, or that his third, The Faceless Ones, is his mother’s personal favourite. Derek lives near Dublin. Before writing his children’s story about a sharply-dressed skeleton detective, he wrote the screenplays for a zombie movie and a murderous horror film. “I think my career-guidance teacher is spinning in her grave,” he says, “or she would be if she were dead.”