CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: That Kindle Cover In Full!

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, as all three regular readers will probably have forgotten by now, is the sequel to THE BIG O, and is currently in the process of being uploaded to Kindle. When it finally gets there, it’ll be wearing the cover above …
  Yes, I know that a lot of people felt / feel it’s an Agatha Christie-type cosy cover, but there was something about the soft-furnishings-glimpsed-through-barred-window that appealed. Also, I like the colours – it whispers ‘Mediterranean’ to me, and very seductively too. Maybe it’s all the pillows. As to whether it sums up the story inside, or will hypnotise potential readers into buying it, I really don’t know. And care less, to be perfectly frank about it.
  Anyway, the man responsible for the design is JT Lindroos of The Outfit, and thank you kindly, sir. As for everyone else who took the time to comment, thanks a million for the feedback, I do appreciate it.
  Now all I have to do is format the blummin’ story properly, and we’re off and running.
  In the meantime, here’s how CRIME ALWAYS PAYS opens up, with a chapter that’s a whopping 279 words long …

Sleeps

It was bad enough Rossi raving how genius isn’t supposed to be perfect, it’s not that kind of gig, but then the vet started carping about Sleeps’ pride and joy, the .22, nickel-plated, pearl grip, enough to stop a man and put him down but not your actual lethal unless you were unlucky. And right now, empty.
  Sleeps waggled it in the vet’s general direction. ‘Less talk,’ he said, ‘more angel of mercy. How’s that ear coming?’
  Not good and not fast, Rossi ducking around like Sugar Ray in a bouncy castle. Still in shock, bofto on the wowee pills, with these delusions of grandeur, he was Tony Montana or maybe Tony Manero, Sleeps couldn’t say for sure.
  It didn’t help there was no actual ear. The wolf had tore it clean off, along with enough skin to top a sizeable tom-tom. Plus the vet was using catgut and what looked to Sleeps like a needle he’d last seen on the Discovery Channel stuck horizontal through a cannibal’s nose.
  In the end Sleeps stepped in and stuck his forefinger in the wound, stirred it around. Rossi screeched once, high-pitched, then keeled over.
  ‘I’ll be wanting,’ Sleeps said, wiping his finger on Rossi’s pants, ‘a bag of horse tranks. And whatever gun you use for putting down the animals.’
  The vet shook his head. ‘We don’t use those anymore, they’re not humane.’
  ‘Humane? You’re a vet, man.’
  ‘We treat them like children,’ the vet said, ‘not animals.’
  ‘Nice theory.’ Sleeps scratched the cattle-prod off his mental list, gestured at Rossi with the .22. ‘But what if they’re a little of both?’