He spoke to students in both assemblies, telling them about his books and staging a mini-mystery involving a missing wedding dress for them to solve.

He told them: ‘The first book I ever wrote was called “The Great Snail Robbery” about a boy, Jeremy, who is having some problems. He thinks the best way to solve the problems is to get a new pet. Lots of things go wrong, it gets worse and worse but there are lots of laughs along the way.

‘Jeremy is in all of my books. The second one is called “The Curious Case of the Missing Orangutan”. He takes his favourite toy into school and it goes missing so he has to try and find out who has taken it. He is trying to solve a mystery and that is what we are talking about today. Mystery writing isn’t just about writing books, but it can be writing for television or a movie. Scooby Doo is a classic mystery story.’

Later on he read an excerpt from his book, did writing workshops with students where he helped them plan their own mysteries.

Dan, a teacher, wrote three books in four years. ‘I used to read with my class all the time and used to love it when we were reading a funny story and they were laughing. I wished I could write something that kids would find funny, so that was my inspiration. I tried my writing out on my class and eventually I got the idea for these stories. I wrote the first two in one year.’

 His third book, “Jeremy’s Shorts” is a book of short stories and he is working on another one currently. Dan’s books are available from Amazon.