Necessary Chances

Christmas time is here. Not so much happiness and cheer.

The Christmas season may be Lisa Wycherly's favorite time of the year, but December 1989 is shaping up to be the worst ever.

First, her husband, Sid Hackbirn, gets the shock of his life when an old high school buddy turns up unexpectedly, triggering Sid's terrifying memories of

fighting in the Vietnam War. Worse yet, the encounter pushes Sid and Lisa into investigating three crooked Federal agents while trying to hide their own top-secret work from their family and Sid's other friends.

But there's a family problem too. Lisa's nephew Darby may be heading for trouble thanks to his exceptional talent as a violinist. A persistent agent is courting the 16-year-old, as are any number of girls. With Darby determined to stand on his own two feet, the rest of the family is worried that the boy is about to get himself into the kind of trouble adults can't handle.

With Darby's ego spinning out of control, and each attempt to capture the crooked Feds going ever more disastrously awry, Lisa's merry little Christmas is turning into one deadly mess.