Full Reviews

Students who have slogged through Hamlet will enjoy this witty, modern retelling of the old story through Horatio's point of view. The Prince family lives in Denmark, Tennessee and runs the Elsinore Paper Company, which is polluting the river and stinking up the town. Not only that, Hamilton Prince (Horatio's best friend) has a new father. Yep! His uncle has married Hamilton's mother "Trudy," within two months of her husband's mysterious death. This book is rife with many clever comparisons, and Gratz has manipulated the story to fit a modern setting. In this book, all's well that ends well. Olivia/Ophelia lives and she and Hamilton get back together, and the bad guys are caught. A few notable deaths and timely explosions do make the scene. The title indicates this is the first of a series, leaving open the question of whether Horatio is going to show up at his sister Desdemona's wedding, or his sister Miranda's island hideaway; or maybe he'll appear on his sister Juliet's balcony in the next book. He has six

Dial Books
October 2007
Ages 14 and up

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sisters, so the question of where he is going to insert himself next, where no Horatio is in the cast, is one to ponder. This book is good fun and might make an excellent reward for those who score "A"s on their Hamlet tests.

Myrna Marler, Associate Professor of English, BYU
for Kliatt Magazine

Gratz is cornering the niche market of novels containing dissimilar topics. Here he combines Hamlet and hardboiled detective pulp. During a vacation from their academy, Horatio Wilkes accompanies his buddy Hamilton Prince to Denmark, Tenn. Just two months after his father passed away under suspicious circumstances, Hamilton's Uncle Claude has married Hamilton's mother. Claude now controls the Elsinore Paper Plant, a multibillion dollar company blatantly polluting the Copenhagen River. Horatio, with a knack for investigating, is determined to expose Claude's corruption while Hamilton, dismayed by what he believes is his mother's betrayal, drowns himself in alcohol. Ultimately, Horatio relies on environmentalist protester Olivia to reveal secrets about Elsinore. The many parallels to Hamlet are interesting, but Gratz wisely avoids producing a carbon copy of the tragedy. Horatio admirably plays the loyal friend but has a cocky voice that is too self-assured and as a teen rings unauthentic. However, this well-crafted mystery has appeal for readers familiar with both Raymond Chandler's novels and Shakespeare's masterpiece.

Kirkus Reviews

As the title and subtitle hint, this mystery story is a revisioned Hamlet, here set in Denmark, Tennessee, the home of Horatio’s boarding-school friend Hamilton Prince. The sudden death of Hamilton’s father, owner of the lucrative Elsinore Paper Plant, and the swift remarriage of Hamilton’s mother to her former brother-in-law has Hamilton suspicious; it doesn’t help that he’s still hung up on townie Olivia, who’s the daughter of the Prince family lawyer and who’s convinced that Elsinore has been covering up its dangerous and illegal pollution of the Copenhagen River. The overlay of Raymond Chandler onto the contemporary Shakespeare plot adds unnecessary gimmickry, but it does make Horatio’s narration teen-appealingly snarky, and the rest of the story capably accentuates the elements likely to intrigue the YA audience: adult dishonesty, youthful disaffection, troubled romance. There’s a hint of Chinatown as well as Chandler in the industrial pollution plot, but Gratz deftly uses that story to energize the updated Hamlet, as his alterations (Hamilton wavers between feigned and real alcoholism rather than madness, while the final face-off is a public hearing rather than a duel) are adroit and effective. The snappy patter and friendship-centered drama make this readable in its own right, and it would serve multiple curricular purposes by giving readers a chance to discuss the reasons behind the variants (Gratz kindly provides his main characters with a more hopeful ending than Shakespeare) and to gain additional understanding from viewing the plot at a different angle. Readers will find this enjoyable as a pleasure read and surprisingly painless as a curricular entry, and if the subtitle suggests sequels rather than “The rest is silence,” can you really regret the continued crime-fighting adventures of Horatio and Hamlet?

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Gratz hit it out of the ballpark with this one. He NAILED the tone. Something Rotten is inspired by two very large hallmarks of literature: Shakespeare and Noir. I wouldn't have thought it, but the two are quite well matched; I mean, Shakespeare tends to be a bit melodramatic, and hardboiled fiction is all about being just slightly over-the-top. The coolest part about taking inspiration from Shakespeare and Raymond Chandler is that the two have been so influential that the audience doesn't really need to be terribly familiar with either to get it. Or the jokes. Even if they don't know who Raymond Chandler is.

Horatio Wilkes has decided to spend his prep school vacation with his filthy-rich (Horatio's on scholarship) best friend, Hamilton Prince. Hamilton's heir to Denmark, Tennessee's lucrative paper plant, Elsinore, but his father has just died suddenly, and since his mother has married his uncle with disturbing speed, things aren't exactly great at the mansion. Soon after the two boys arrive, they discover a message from Horatio's dead father who appears as a shocking specter of the man he once was. Hamilton is convinced that his father was murdered, and Horatio has no choice but help Hamilton find the truth. It won't be easy, in fact, it might just get him killed.

Gratz firmly establishes the intent of the novel right away and by the second page, you not only know the rules, you are fully engrossed. You buy that world. You buy that smart, fast-talking wise-guy teen and his self-indulgent, damaged, friend. You want to BE Horatio. Gratz gives each of his character's just enough depth to avoid becoming caricatures, but keeps the over-exposed raw feel in keeping with the hardboiled/noir style. For pete's sake, Horatio's even got a signature drink: root beer (whereas Hamilton's a bit of an alcoholic).

It's peppered with classic one-liners:
How can you not laugh at: "Her wind-breaker broke in all the right places..." p 14**
Or: "Then again, lots of things take longer then his mother's remarriage. Like toast" p 23.
But doesn't forget:"...there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" p 106.

I mean, seriously.

GIVE THIS TO TEENS. I know you are always looking for good mysteries for them. We always are. This really is the best teen mystery I've read in, well, I don't remember the last really good teen mystery. Probably Golden's Body of Evidence. And I actually like this better (and you KNOW how much I liked those). It's funny. Genuinely funny. And SMART, let us not forget that. It's based on ole Shakes, after all.

Jackie Parker, Interactive Reader

The smell of the paper mill in Denmark, Tennessee, is Somtehing Rotten because the plant is dumping cancer-causing waste into the Copenhagen River. Teen detective Horatio Wilkes accompanies his best friend, Hamilton Prince, scion of the mill-owning family, home for summer vacation. The two are trying to answer questions surrounding Hamilton's father's death. Both boys suspect Prince's Uncle Claude, who quickly married the grieving widow. When they view a video left by the dead man, the investigation intensifies. With changes in names and events, Alan Gratz has mined Shakespeare's Hamlet for characters and situations in this mystery that also has a bit of romance. For example, Olivia, Hamilton's estranged girlfriend, crusades to clean up the pollution, but becomes very ill after drinking river water to publicize her cause. There's also a play within the novel, and two inept flunkies named Roscoe Grant and Gilbert Stern. While Horatio uncovers clues that point to Claude as the killer, his quick thinking also saves hard-drinking Hamilton from an untimely death. Erik Davies narrates as Horatio with cool prep school sophistication nicely balanced with droll humor. Fun to listen to as a whodunit, the novel also offers an ecology lesson and is an intriguing way to study the elements of the Elizabethan original. A worthwhile additional purchase for school and public libraries.

School Library Journal (Audio Book Review)

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