Launch and Giveaway of A Killing in Kensington

Today, I am launching A Killing in Kensington , the second mystery in the Patrick Shea series. Here is the blurb from Amazon:
Detective Sergeant Patrick Shea of London's Metropolitan Police and his new partner, Detective Chief Inspector Tommy Boyle, have been handed a high-profile murder case. In the penthouse of Kensington Tower, playboy Clifton Trentmore lay dead with his head bashed in, and the investigation reveals a man who was loathed by both sexes. With too few clues and too many suspects, Shea and Boyle must determine who hated Trentmore enough to kill him. But as Patrick digs deeper, he finds his suspects have secrets of their own.If you enjoy Law and Order UK, you will enjoy A Killing in Kensington.

To celebrate the launch, I am giving away two e-books, either Kindle or Nook. All you have to do is leave a comment and an e-mail address where I can contact you by Sunday, October 14. Winners will be announced on October 15.

To whet your appetite, her is an excerpt from Chapter 2:
Patrick studied the profile of the prostrate Trentmore. The dead man was in his early to mid fifties, tall, lean, with a full head of dyed blond hair and sagging jowls. When struck, he had been holding a whiskey glass that went flying through space, emptying its content onto the wood floor. A formal dinner jacket, hung over the back of the couch, indicated that the victim had been out at some time during the evening. After removing his shoes and opening his tie, he had poured himself a drink in preparation for settling in for the evening, but that was when the killer had come calling.“Who found the body?” Patrick asked a detective constable standing behind him.“Diane Namur, the chief financial officer of Trentmore World Imports,” Detective Constable Jane Millard said, handing Patrick Miss Namur’s business card.“Where is Miss Namur?” Patrick asked, looking around the flat.Wearing an uncomfortable look, DC Millard explained that because Miss Namur had been sick in the loo, she had been allowed to leave after agreeing to an interview the next day.“Miss Namur couldn’t stop crying, sobbing actually, very near hysterical,” the constable explained. “She kept saying ‘no,’ ‘no,’ ‘no,’ over and over, and then she got sick. It seems she had stepped in the victim’s blood. We believe those are her shoeprints in the blood trail.”“Did you get the shoes?”“Yes, and they’ve been bagged and tagged by SOCO. Before leaving, she told us how she found the body, but anything else…,” she said, shaking her head. “It just wasn’t possible. But we were able to get hold of Trentmore’s driver, Charles Wyatt. I spoke with him thirty minutes ago, and he’s on his way here.”“Thank you, DC Millard,” Patrick said, smiling. He wanted to reassure her that her decision to allow Miss Namur to leave had been the right one. Vomiting witnesses were rarely helpful. “We’ll contact Miss Namur in the morning.”Patrick and Tommy climbed the interior staircase to the seventh floor. Apparently, Clifton Trentmore did not have guests because the entire floor was given over to his study, master bedroom, master bath, and a cedar-lined wardrobe that was a room in itself.Patrick noted that the square footage of the seventh floor was bigger than the two-story Shea family home in Kilburn, and the bathroom was something you would expect to see in a mansion on the Riviera owned by an Arab emir. In addition to a marble bathtub big enough for a family picnic, there was a shower with three showerheads: one above, one chest level, and one taking direct aim at the genitals.“I guess Trentmore liked a clean pecker,” Patrick said while looking at the shower and bidet.Their next stop was the cedar-lined cupboard. “Do you believe this?” Tommy said, inhaling the fragrant wood. “As big as this is, I’ve actually seen bigger master suites. When I was a young whipper-snapper, way back in the eighties, I was the uniform logging in the coppers working a murder at a mansion near Kensington Park. The couple’s clothes cupboard was bigger than some haberdasheries I’ve been in.”Opening the drawers, the detectives found everything as neat as a pin—nothing tossed about. A jewel case containing a half dozen watches, including a Girard-Perregaux and Piaget, was untouched.“There’s a lot of money lying right there in that case,” Patrick said, admiring the elegant timepieces. “Obviously, robbery is not the motive here.”In the bedroom was a chest of drawers lined with pictures of the victim taken at exotic locales. Not one of them had another person in the photo. Apparently, Trentmore was an admirer of his own good looks. Both agreed the victim looked like Bill Nighy if the actor were twenty pounds heavier.The only thing that had been marked on the upper floor was a dirty facial tissue crammed between the headboard and the mattress of a king-sized bed. Pointing to the tissue, Patrick thought how nice it would be if the killer’s DNA was on the soiled tissue. Nah, too easy.The two men returned to the sixth-floor foyer, and after shedding their bunny suits, decided their next step would be to find out who else was in the building at the time of Trentmore’s murder.“While SOCO does its work,” Tommy said, “why don’t we find out what the other residents of the building have to say about our dead guy?”

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A Killing in Kensington is available in e-book format only.