I finished Skulduggery Pleasant this morning -- it's pretty good! One of the review snippets on the back cover calls it a "new genre -- screwball fantasy," and that's not far off. The comparisons to the Harry Potter books are inevitable, and it does have *some* similarities, most notably the existence of the magical world right under the noses of the non-magic people. But beyond that, there really aren't any other striking similarities.
It's got a lot of elements in common with the Kiki Strike books, actually, perhaps a TINY dash of Buffy, and the title character (although he's a skeleton) reminds me of no one more than Remington Steele. Seriously.
It's fun -- I think Buffistas would like it. There's a sequel, which I just started.
Oh, also -- in the first book, the primary baddie's weapon of choice is some weird power where his all he has to do is point his right hand, which is all skinless and red and gross, at a person/creature, and they die a gruesome, agonizing death.
Its name? The Red Right Hand. (The character who wielded it did NOT, unfortunately, have a soundtrack playing whenever he did battle. [And I have no doubt that the author name it that deliberately.])
(Oh yes, I laughed my ass off at that.)