Dame Lettie Colston, seventy-nine, O.B.E. and pioneer penal reformer, has much in common with the elderly residents of the Maud Long Medical Ward. All are united by scorn, resentment, boredom--and the maudlin humour that masks the awareness of impending death.

Then the insidious telephone calls begin. 'Remember, you must die,' intones the grave, anonymous voice.

As the suspicious recipients set out to unravel the macabre mystery and catch the culprit before the culprit catches them, the intrigues, duplicities and tragedies of their lives--past and present--come to light in Muriel Spark's immortally funny parable of life and death