First Draft Completed

I've just finished the first draft.

It clocks in at just over 33,000 words which apparently in industry terms is more usually termed a 'novella', or at best a 'short novel', but I deliberately wanted to strip things down and keep things fast-paced, as befits the story.

Although I haven't yet re-read it, or even spell-checked it, I'm very pleased with how I was able to change it substantially from the original, including making changes 'on the fly', yet still arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, which wraps things up very neatly.
The ending might not be a total surprise, but it is decidedly different from the original, and is nice and abrupt.
In any event, where surprise endings are concerned, one always has to be sure that it could have been flagged at some stage during the preceding narrative, as 'deus ex machinas' are a big no-no, if a novel is to have any credibility.

I'll be sending this first draft to a friend and crime fiction fan to see what she thinks as to how it stands up, and reads.
At this stage the narrative is probably a bit rough and ready but I'm happy with the dialogue, pacing, and characterisations, so the main issues to be addressed are possibly fleshing out some scenes, and fine-tuning some of the narrative, and possibly also tweaking some of the pacing