Plot
A cabal of Ankh-Morpork's guild leaders seeks to gradually depose the Patrician, replace him with Nobby Nobbs as the new king and rule the city through him.
To implement this, the cabal orders the golems' newly-made king, Meshugah, to make poisoned candles and have them delivered to the palace. However, the golems used a baker's oven rather than a proper kiln to bake Meshugah, meaning the king is literally "half-baked". Its mind overloaded with all the wishes and propositions of the many golems, it goes mad and starts killing people.
At this point the City Watch steps in trying to solve the murders and the poisoning of Lord Vetinari. With the assistance of their new forensics expert dwarf Cheery Littlebottom, Commander Vimes and Captain Carrot slowly unravel the mystery. Carrot and Dorfl, one of the golems, fight and defeat the golem king at the candlestick factory. Afterwards, Vimes confronts the city's chief herald, a vampire, who instigated the whole affair. Dorfl arrests him despite tenuous evidence and Vimes burns down all the heralds' records of the nobility as a sort of punishment.
In the end, Vetinari has recovered completely, Dorfl is sworn in as a watchman, Vimes gets a pay rise, and the watch house gets a new dart board.
Read more about this topic: Feet Of Clay (novel)
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“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)