by Terry Pratchett

 

Imagine a million clever rats. Rats that don't run. Rats that fight...

 

Maurice, a scruffy tomcat with an eye for the main chance, has the perfect fiddle going. He has a stupid-looking kid for a piper, and he has his very own plague of rats - rats who are strangely educated, so Maurice can no longer think of them as 'lunch'. And everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers. This ploy is giving him lots of money...

 

Until they try the trick in the far-flung town of Bad Blintz, and the nice little con suddenly goes down the drain. Someone there is playing a different tune. A dark, shadowy tune. Something very, very bad is waiting in the cellars. The rats must learn a new word. Evil. And it's not a game any more...

 

This book won the Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for the WH Smith Children's Award and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.