On a clear autumn L.A. morning, sitting in the front row of his best friend's funeral, professional loafer Quince Bishop can't think of anything more depressing than watching yet another loved one being lowered into the ground--until a band of guerilla environmentalists crash the ceremony to deliver a lecture on the high cost of dying in America. One violent impulse later, Quince finds himself up to his waist in dirt ... and he hasn't even begun to dig himself a hole. With the help of beautiful funeral-rights advocate Maria Casteneda--not to mention the complicated ambitions of reporter and perennial ex-girlfriend Melanie Roth--Quince learns just how an unscrupulous funeral director can turn death into a high-class living. Unable to let buried skeletons lie, Quince Bishop unwittingly sets himself on a collision course with two entrepreneurial ex-cons who are hatching a burial plot of their own. Chaos, confusion, and double-dealing are on the program, and only one thing is certain: all paths lead to the cemetery.