Wednesday, June 13, 2007

This Landy Is Your Landy

With a Harry Potter-sized hole to fill, HarperCollins have turned to Derek Landy (right) and his skeletal anti-hero Skulduggery Pleasant, a dead wizard-type private eye who haunts the mean streets of Dublin with his 12-year-old sidekick, Stephanie. Word around the campfire is that Landy, a first-time author with screenplays (Dead Bodies, Boy Eats Girl) in his back pocket, received a seven-figure advance for a three-book deal. Nice work if you can get it, etc. So – is it any good? “A very tasty mix of the cinematic and the novelistic against which a cast of vivid heroes and villains play out the rip-roaring storyline,” says Publishing News. We like the sound of the villain plotting world domination, Nefarious Serpine, and so does Warner Bros: the Harry Potter franchise earned them some decent kicking around money, and now they’re taking a punt on Skulduggery Pleasant, with Landy to adapt the novel for the big screen. Are we jealous? Hell, it’s not like he’s dating Nicole Kidman or anything … he isn't, right?
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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.