Something Is Rotten In Fettig humorously satirizes a fictitious Republic's legal system that is similar to ours. Through a cast of idiosyncratic characters, it lampoons many things associated with the law, including judges, juries, attorneys, and trials.
The novel depicts the travails of Leopold Plotkin, a kosher butcher with a pathological aversion to conflict. Plotkin inadvertently ignites a crisis in the Republic that propels him into a conflict with every branch of government. When he refuses to undo what he did, he is indicted by a Secret Blind Jury, arrested by the National Constabulary, and consigned to the notorious Purgatory House of Detention where he is housed near a lunatic.
Later, Plotkin is prosecuted by an ethically-challenged Prosecutor General, tried before a habitually pro-prosecution Judge, subjected to a feckless Jury that is convinced of his guilt before the trial begins, and defended by a reclusive lawyer who has never been inside a courtroom. The butcher’s only witness is an emotionally unhinged former art curator who has resided in the Warehouse for the Purportedly Insane since burning a collection of museum paintings that didn’t meet his aesthetic standards. Nobody, including Plotkin, expects an acquittal.