Something Is Rotten in Fettig by Jere Krakoff

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Told in a wry, understated voice, the novel satirizes the travails of Leopold Plotkin, a failing kosher butcher with a pathological aversion to conflict. After Plotkin commits an act that ignites a crisis in his Republic, he is propelled into conflicts with every branch of government. When he refuses the government’s demands 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 languishes next to a defrocked insane lawyer whose nocturnal machinations threaten to drive him crazy. After months of languishing in prison, Plotkin is prosecuted by the Republic’s ethically-challenged Prosecutor General, tried before a congenitally pro-prosecution judge, and defended by a reclusive lawyer who has never been in a courtroom. The butcher’s only witness in the highly anticipated trial is an unhinged resident of the Warehouse for the Purportedly Insane. Everybody, including Plotkin and his small circle of supporters, expects a conviction and imposition of the longest sentence allowed by law, if not longer.

Among other things, the novel lampoons prosecutors, public defenders, judges, juries, expert witnesses, high courts, low courts, trials, and potential perjurers.