Stroganov and murder

So, jogging down the up-people-conveyor at Glasgow Queen Street's subway connection (there was nobody on it: some opportunities in life can't be missed), I looked at the posters, to avoid looking at the withering disapproval of the people on the down-conveyor. Your fault for taking up the whole width of it, you bastards. 

A new one advertised a book called 'The Love and Death of Caterina'. (The subtitle contained some of these words: passion, betrayal, lust, seduction, shocking, devastating. All of them even, maybe.) Thing is, it was hard to make out from a way off - especially the conjunctions in much smaller print. So at first I read it as 'Love, Death, and Catering.'

I ask you, comrades: doesn't that sound like a much more interesting book?

The beef-stroganov hissed on the hob: a sound like ugly rumours. It was almost as sizzling as Paolo, the hyper-libidinous Mediterranean sous-chef –  as he had been, anyway, before his corpse had splattered its blood over the virginal flour-sacks in the scullery, its face twisted in the final throes of passion.

Caterina turned over the meat and flavoured it with a few quiet tears, and more paprika than was strictly necessary. 

Who said I couldn't do brevity? 72 words, and it smells to me like some hot Hollywood property. Any rising young producers in the audience?