Centre Stage

Whilst on duty in Afghanistan, Special Forces Sergeant Mike Bannerman is badly injured by an improvised explosive device (IED) and learns that his leg
will never fully recover.

Months later, on leaving hospital in the UK, Bannerman accepts a civilian role, sweetly but firmly imposed upon him by his dying childhood guardian, and takes up the reins of a busy theatre on the South Coast. The theatre is the last in a once vast entertainment empire.

Real estate comes with the deal, including a gold plated chunk just down the road in uber-wealthy Haven Beach.

From his glass walled apartment Bannerman looks out across a vast and beautiful harbour – a playground for the super rich. So, apart from the endless daily clank of the ferry terminal’s chains directly below his penthouse balcony, our man is not exactly slumming it.

Gradually, Bannerman slips into the demanding round the clock life of the theatre. It has its rewards. Busy, and complex, it brings him new and trusted colleagues (a reminder of his former military days) and it offers the possibility of ‘making up’ with his estranged wife Ellie - and seeing his daughter again.

He is approaching ‘break through’ on that front when he receives an early call leading him to the discovery, Centre Stage, of a very hard and a very dead director.

Under the spotlight’s glare the director has been shackled into one of the forthcoming play’s evil props, and his naked corpse has Bannerman’s paperknife protruding from its chest.
The knife carries a message - ‘Murder Most Foul’ in faded gold leaf, screams out from the handle.

Bannerman has been implicated in murder and fights to prove his innocence. But, he is unaware that his professional drug busting past has come back, with sadistic vengeance, to hunt him down.

Lied to, set up by one of his own, and with the help of a beautiful American Boudicca complicating both their lives - Bannerman is sucked into a desperate battle for survival.

He draws on every tortured fibre - pushes his body to the limits of endurance - then picks himself up and goes that extra mile, in a high octane game of revenge, double bluff, and bloody execution at sea.

Bannerman pulls no punches - rusty and hobbling, he fights to win.