When the new owners and international guests at a mountain lodge converge for a Christmas weekend, the previous owner returns with a knife in his back, leaving a vision-impaired constable and the group to solve a murder mystery where everyone is a suspect.

SYNOPSIS:

WILLIAM MARTIN (30) and ELLA GARCIA (30) invest their life savings in a Swedish mountain lodge and take ownership from LARS SVENSONSON (90), three days before Christmas. Local CONSTABLE MAGGIE ANDERSSON (40s) warns the couple of an escaped prisoner, JIMMY REGAN (22), but her description is hampered by poor eyesight. The couple finds Jimmy, a comical Irish kleptomaniac and gypsy-like traveler,” hiding in a guestroom, but Jimmy convinces them to hire him as a butler named “Alfred” who looks professional in Lars’s black suit.

Alfred greets the arriving international guests including UTA SCHULZ (24), a cute German biathlete; TITO MARTINEZ (26), a debonaire gentleman from Chile; LILLY CHOU (23), a Chinese American and aspiring film director from Los Angeles; and AYUSH BRAHMIN (28), a promising detective and member of the Indian Army Military Police. FATHER O’MALLEY (40), a charismatic Catholic priest, brings Irish whiskey to see Lars, unaware he sold the place, and the storm prevents everyone from leaving. They must all survive on a partial food delivery of pancake mix, potatoes, wine, and eggnog, while the priest makes do on the Irish Whiskey.

Suddenly, Lars bursts through the door and lands face-first in the lobby with a knife in his back. William calls the Constable, who barely makes it to the lodge, and soon everyone is a suspect. Secrets and motives are plentiful during the Constable’s comically frustrating interviews, and she asks for Ayush’s help. Tito was a prospective buyer of the lodge and met Uta there six months prior. Lilly frequently corresponded with Lars and sounded like a gold-digger. William and Ella learned that Lars owed significant back taxes and inflated the lodge’s occupancy rates. They all had motives to kill Lars.

The cozy Swedish lodge inspires love. Tito reunites with Uta to propose on Christmas. Lilly, a gypsy herself, is smitten with Jimmy. Ella learns that love and laughter are more important than money. And Father O’Malley and the Constable reignite their childhood friendship. Meanwhile, the Constable and Ayush find boxes of letters under Lars’s bed that provide clues to Lars’s demise. He was dying of cancer and getting his affairs in order before he could have a Viking funeral and enter Valhalla (Heaven). Ayush takes over the investigation after befriending the owners and guests. He finds evidence that Lars carefully planned his demise like a brave warrior, backing into the knife lodged between crates in his toolshed. Jimmy finds Lars’s last will leaving his worldly possessions to those who need them. Father O’Malley holds the largest Christmas Sunday Mass in the parish’s history thanks to his new friends. And, our story ends with the mystery solved and a feel-good Viking funeral for Lars before Christmas dinner.

THE HOLIDAY LODGE MYSTERY