MICKEY SPILLANE'S ENCORE FOR MURDER

Mike Hammer is working security on a Broadway play starring a lost ladylove from his notorious past. She’s making a comeback, and wants Mike to come back, too... into her arms. But soon he finds himself centerstage in a production that co-stars a stalker, a kidnapper, a mob boss, a sexy golddigger, a scheming producer, and a hired killer or two (or three). And if he doesn’t solve the mystery, it’ll be (what else?) curtains. It’s a live-action Golden Age Radio-style presentation that presents all the color, danger and sensuality for which the master of pulp private eye fiction was famed. A gem among the unfinished material in the late Mickey Spillane’s files, ENCORE FOR MURDER! existed only as a synopsis until Spillane’s chosen successor, Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), used it as the basis for a Golden Age Radio-style play. Originally produced as an audiobook with TV’s Hammer STACY KEACH and a full cast, ENCORE FOR MURDER! was taken to a Mystery and Crime Fiction Writers Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, with GARY SANDY as Spillane’s legendary P.I. The play was next produced in Clearwater, Florida, at the Ruth Eckerd Hall, again with Sandy (the only actor to date to play Hammer on stage). Writer/director Collins – whose indie movies include MOMMY, MOMMY’S DAY, and ELIOT NESS: AN UNTOUCHABLE LIFE – asked Sandy to return once again as Hammer for a benefit production supporting the local Art Center in the writer’s Iowa hometown, Muscatine. This production, with the star of the classic sitcom WKRP IN CINCINNATI and a group of talented local actors, brings the Manhattan of Mike Hammer to life with his secretary Velda (Rene Mauck) and his frustrated cop pal Pat Chambers (Chris Causey) along for a rough/tough, nostalgic and frequently funny ride.