What happens when you take a con man and set him up as the head of a nearly-defunct business? Lord Vetinari intends to find out in this continuation of the highly popular Discworld series.

Moist von Lipwig expects to be executed at dawn (or thereabouts) only to realize when he wakes up, he's not dead. This is completely unexpected for him, considering he's conman of the utmost abilities, able to run cons on the most suspect of people. He finds himself in the presence of Lord Vetinary, the tyrant of Ankh-Morpork, who offers him a choice - take the position of Postmaster General or actually, really, truly die.

Moist takes the position, figuring he can sky out of Ankh-Morpork on the next horse but Vetinari is wise to that thought, assigning a golem to keep an eye (such as it were) on Moist. As a golem will never tire and always, always performs the task assigned to it (until a new one is provided), the golem is the perfect warder.

At first, obviously, Moist looks at the Post Office as a giant con. He manages to charm the few postmen left as well as insisting they actually do their job - deliver letters. This causes quite a shock, as letters have not been delivered in literally years. In fact, the Post Office is swarmed with envelopes, some dating back over eighty years. All of them want delivered.

The problem is the new system that is delivering messages all over the country; the Clacks Towers. And the current regent of the Clacks is not about to let Moist get in the way of his plans on keeping all the money in transportation of messages from one place to another.

With the help of his golem, the postmen, a friendly god or two and the chain smoking Miss Darling, Moist realizes that maybe he could make a go of this - or at least pull off the biggest con ever and walk away with the prize: his life.