Feet of Clay (1996)
Feet of Clay is a 1996 fiction book written by Terry Pratchett.
Someone is murdering harmless old men in Ankh-Morpork, and the crime scenes hold no sign of any living killer at all. At the same time the Patrician is being poisoned, slowly and cleverly, by a method no one can find. Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch works the case the hard way, by patiently eliminating the possible, alongside Captain Carrot, the werewolf Angua, and Corporal Cheery Littlebottom, a dwarf with a gift for forensics and a secret of her own. Terry Pratchett bends a proper police procedural around golems, identity, and the uneasy question of what it means to be owned.
Quick answers
What is Feet of Clay about?
Someone is murdering harmless old men in Ankh-Morpork, and the crime scenes hold no sign of any living killer at all. At the same time the Patrician is being poisoned, slowly and cleverly, by a method no one can find. Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch works the case the hard way, by patiently eliminating the possible, alongside Captain Carrot, the werewolf Angua, and Corporal Cheery Littlebottom, a dwarf with a gift for forensics and a secret of her own. Terry Pratchett bends a proper police procedural around golems, identity, and the uneasy question of what it means to be owned.
When was Feet of Clay published?
Feet of Clay was published on 16 December 2008.
Who made Feet of Clay?
Feet of Clay was written by Terry Pratchett.
Similar books
Feet of Clay in our writing
- Companion guide: Discworld: The Complete Guide to Terry Pratchett's Flat Planet
A few thoughts on Feet of Clay
Disco Elysium is the natural companion, a detective story as interested in class, character, and a broken city as in the whodunit itself. Blade Runner shares the question the golems raise, what separates a made thing from a person. And True Detective brings the same grim, methodical investigator working a case that keeps opening downward.
Detective stories where the case gets solved by patient legwork, not luck
Feet of Clay is Pratchett's turn at a proper procedural, Vimes eliminating suspects the slow, careful way while the city keeps lying to him. These five share that same rigor: an investigator working a strange or impossible case methodically, refusing to let a weird premise excuse sloppy detective work.
Discworld novels to try next if you're not ready to leave Ankh-Morpork
Feet of Clay is one corner of Ankh-Morpork, the Watch's corner. These seven wander the rest of the city, following Pratchett's satire into the post office, the press, the football pitch, the army, and beyond, always the same cranky, overcrowded, strangely lovable metropolis underneath.