Terry Pratchett's Going Postal - Plot

Plot

The story follows Moist von Lipwig, who after years of undertaking confidence tricks on others finds himself caught by the guards, the sergeant being a werewolf, and is sentenced to death under the alias of Albert Spangler. After a brief spell in prison he is hanged by the neck, but not killed. He is brought before Patrician Havelock Vetinari who insists that he either becomes the new Postmaster or be executed by falling down a deep pit.

Moist attempts to escape but is caught by his parole officer Mr. Pump, a golem, and brought to the rundown post office where he meets his two staff; Junior Postman Tolliver Groat and his assistant, the pin-obsessed Stanley Howler. Moist learns that the post office has been superseded by semaphore towers known as "Clacks" which are run by the unscrupulous Reacher Gilt.

Initially Moist attempts to escape his duty, but realises that he cannot get away without overcoming Mr. Pump, so he goes to the Golem Trust to help understand how golems are created and controlled. There he meets Adora Belle Dearheart for whom he begins to have feelings. His skills prove to be useful in making the post office popular again, both when he invents the postage stamp in an attempt to raise money which proves to be highly successful, and when he starts an express post service to neighbouring cities.

While staying in the post office Moist begins to experience visions which show him that some of his confidence tricks led to tragedies for those he conned, which result in him starting to have feelings of remorse for the first time, these feelings are heightened when he discovers that Adora Belle's father, Richard Dearheart, was indirectly a victim of one of his cons, and as a result lost ownership of his invention, the Clacks. Moist confesses his past misdeeds to Adora Belle just as the post office is set alight, so Moist sets his own safety aside and runs into the burning building to rescue Stanley Howler. Before finding Stanley, he encounters Mr. Gryle, a banshee assassin, who confesses that he killed the previous four Postmasters. Just as Mr. Gryle is about to strike, Moist calls on the haunted letters in the post office to stop Mr. Gryle, which they do.

The burning of the post office means that the people of Ankh-Morpork are turning to the "Clacks" for sending their messages, so Moist comes up with a plan to draw people back to the post office by pretending that he has experienced a vision telling him where the gods have buried money to help repair the post office (in reality the money was a hidden stash from his past cons). This helps draws people back to the post office, so Moist announces a new long distance delivery service.

Meanwhile Adora Belle Dearheart is working on a way to jam up the Clacks with the help of a group of hackers (clacks-crackers) called "The Smoking Gnu" which they succeed in doing temporarily. The Clacks' chief engineer, Mr Pony, finds a way of preventing the jamming process, but Mr. Pony begins to see that working for Gilt is wrong and presents Adora with evidence to prove that Gilt had the past four postmasters, as well as Adora's brother, killed.

When an attempt to jam the Clacks fails Moist challenges Gilt to a race – Clacks versus post office – the message to be sent is a biography of Havelock Vetinari, to Überwald. Moist and Adora employ a disused Clack tower to intercept and successfully change the message from the biography to a confession of Gilt's guilt, which is witnessed in Ankh-Morpork, so Gilt is arrested and Adora is made manager of the Clacks. At the end of the story a postman (played by Terry Pratchett) arrives at Vetinari's palace to deliver a letter to Gilt, using one of his aliases. Vetinari implies that Gilt killed himself by falling down the deep pit.