Fiction Addiction’s Blog

Something Rotten by Alan Gratz is a young adult mystery novel that has been nominated for the 2008 SIBA Children’s Book Award. I was given a copy at the 2007 SIBA trade show, but it got lost in my stacks and stacks of reading material and I just got arround to reading it last night.

Gratz’s book takes place in Denmark, TN, where our hero, 17-year-old Horatio Wiles, is visiting his friend Hamilton Prince for the summer. The visit was set up months ago, before Hamilton’s father died of cancer and his mother remarried his father’s brother, Claude. Their first day in Denmark, Horatio & Hamilton visit the family’s paper mill and discover a videotape of Hamilton’s dad claiming that he was murdered. The two friends immediately begin to investigate, but will they be able to close in on the killer before the killer closes in on them?

Something Rotten is a contemporary take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet with a likeable, wisecracking hero in Horatio Wilkes.

Check availability of Alan Gratz books at Fiction Addiction.