In prohibition-era New York, Nick Charles plans to enjoy a quiet Christmas with his glamorous wife, Nora, their Schnauzer, Asta, and a case of good scotch. But the bullet-riddled corpse of a former lover, a missing inventor and a junked-up hoodlum with a careless attitude to guns force him out of retirement and back into business. To make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where none can be trusted.