Ahead of the Press Publishing

The holiday season is upon the Kerr Gang and what Ellen wants more than anything is to have a family photograph taken with Santa Claus to celebrate her daughter’s first Christmas. Amid the seasonal disturbances and potential disasters which threaten to ruin the holiday, she manages to gather everyone together at the local department store’s North Pole. Before the photographs are completed, however, the Jolly Old Elf playing Father Christmas suddenly turns red, begins to choke and within seconds, dies in front of them. A subsequent homicide investigation reveals he was killed by a fast-acting poison shot from a small dart gun at very close range. While the finger of suspicion initials points to the Kerrs as being the closest to Santa before he died, they have worse trouble on their hands: the collusion of Ellen’s mother and Christine Bond, district attorney B.B. Bond’s wife, who are planning – at Hugh’s expense – a lavish New Year Eve’s party in San Francisco. Amid hastily rearranged plans, a murder investigation where Hugh reluctantly agrees to represent the department store’s security guard against the eventual murder charge; the dire threat of bedbugs and the ultimate determination they might have been better off being the suspects in order to avoid attending the event of the Season, the attorney, his wife and their extended family put their heads together to solve this bizarre, convoluted case.