As picturesque Longley, New York, gets ready to ring in the holiday season, caterers Bernadette and Libby Simmons are coping with their busiest time of year. If thatโs not enough to make them run around like crazed elves, theyโre recruited for a cooking show contest that pits celebrity chefs against each otherโand gives rise to murder...
Visions of sugar plums are most decidedly not dancing in Libbyโs headโespecially since she and her sister are set to appear on the Hortense Calabash Cooking Show. The premise is to give six professional caterers random ingredients and have them whip up a holiday meal. Libby knows that cooking under pressure is not her forteโplus, the camera adds ten pounds! Sheโll look like a stuffed Christmas goose.
The icing on the fruitcake is that Hortense Calabash is a grinch of year-round proportions. And the other contestants are some of the most demandingโand difficultโchefs in the business. But, as Bernie points out: the show will be great (and, more importantly, free) publicity for their store, A Little Taste of Heaven.
Bernie and Libby are thrown into the mix as arguments and accusations simmer on the set. Holiday spirit has left the buildingโand leaves a bodyโwhen Hortense, all dressed up as Santa Claus for the opening sequence, is killed by an exploding oven. Itโs soon clear that Hortenseโs demise was far from accidental.
Now as Bernie and Libby stir up the past, they open up a king-sized can of motives. Each contestant had a previous run-in with the horrible Hortense, who engaged in blackmail, rumor-mongering, and illicit affairs at every turnโฆbut which chef couldnโt stand the heat? With the holiday rush in full swing and a killer still on the loose, the caterers of Christmas present have no choice but to wrap up the mystery before their geese are well and fully cookedโฆ
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