Going Postal recap

The confidence trickster Moist von Lipwig is hanged for his crimes, but survives: Lord Vetinari faked the execution and offers him a choice, run Ankh-Morpork's ruined Post Office or truly die. Watched by a golem parole officer, Mr. Pump, Moist reluctantly takes the job and finds the building buried under decades of undelivered mail and haunted by the memory of postmen who died mysteriously. Using his gift for showmanship, he clears the backlog, invents the adhesive postage stamp, and turns the Post Office into a popular sensation. This puts him in direct conflict with Reacher Gilt, the corrupt magnate whose company has bled the Grand Trunk signalling network dry. Moist also grows close to Adora Belle Dearheart, whose brother was murdered by Gilt's people. He challenges Gilt to a public contest to see whether letter or signal tower can carry a message across the continent faster, wins through nerve and trickery, and exposes Gilt's fraud. Gilt is offered the same choice Moist once faced but refuses it and dies, and Moist stays on as the city's Postmaster.

Moist von Lipwig, a career confidence trickster and forger operating under a false name, is finally caught and hanged for his crimes. He wakes to find the execution was staged: Lord Vetinari, ruler of Ankh-Morpork, has spared him for a purpose. The Patrician gives Moist a choice, take charge of the city's long-dead Post Office and make it work again, or step through a door to a real death. Assigned a tireless golem named Mr. Pump as his parole officer, Moist finds himself the reluctant new Postmaster of a decaying building crammed with decades of undelivered letters.

Moist wins his public race against the Grand Trunk and, more importantly, exposes Reacher Gilt's massive fraud and the deaths he caused, using evidence and his own criminal instincts turned to honest ends. Gilt is ruined and hauled before Lord Vetinari, who offers him exactly the bargain Moist accepted: a job, and a chance to make himself useful, or a door leading to a lethal drop. Gilt, unable to give up his freedom, walks through the door and dies. The Grand Trunk is taken out of Gilt's hands and set to be run properly, and the Post Office is firmly re-established as a thriving public institution. Moist, having discovered that going straight can be as thrilling as any swindle, chooses to stay as Postmaster rather than flee, and his relationship with Adora Belle Dearheart deepens. Vetinari has quietly acquired a reformed rogue he can point at the city's next problem.