Death is no welcome joke... Especially for Solly ka Afrika, a former investigative journalist. When he accepts an invitation to a lunch party in Johannesburg, he thinks he is paying homage to an old friend. Judge Jansen Van Der Schyff, his retired old friend, is celebrating his 80th birthday. The judge has the displeasure of playing host to a right wing brother he has not seen or spoken to for 42 years...and a bitter, rich businessman whose divorce case he had presided over. As the guests congregate at the lunch table to sing for the judge, something happens...suddenly, the old judge slumps headfirst into his birthday cake - seriously dead! Someone shouts, It's a heart attack! Solly looks at all the guests - a strange bunch that annoy him, and somehow he believes that the accident was staged. He finds himself in the midst of an unexpected death... or was it murder? Solly ka Afrika is disappointed that his hosts have invited him to drive 300 kilometers not as a guest of honour, but as a guest of death.