Scruffy tomcat Maurice has the perfect fiddle going. He has a stupid-looking kid for a piper and his very own plague of strangely educated rats. And knowing the stories about rats and pipers, everyone is giving him money. Until they go to Bad Blintz and find someone playing a different tune.

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 - and 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. It's not a game any more. It's definitely a rat-eat-rat world down there. In fact, that might only be the start...Bestselling novelist Terry Pratchett leads readers from tale to tail in a darkly imaginative and fiendishly entertaining story, the first for younger readers set in the Discworld universe, the setting of his phenomenally successful fantasy novels.