We often do beginnings on Sunday, taking a look at the start of one of my novels. CAT ON A HOT TIN WOOF, the 16th novel – but not the last! – in the Chet and Bernie mystery series – comes out April 14 (preorders make the publisher happy and therefore me). We’re now doing the beginning of each one, going backwards (since the series can be read in any order) and on the 16th Sunday we’ll do CAT ON A HOT TIN WOOF. Today we’re at A FISTFUL OF COLLARS.

“Heard you drove another one off a cliff,” said Nixon Panero. He spat a thin brown stream of chewing tobacco into an empty paint can, or maybe not that empty. Yellow paint, the yellow of egg yolks, now with a brown swirl in the middle: there’s all kinds of beauty in life.