Books
No Escape
The Marquette Mysteries Book 3
Private eye Kenny Marquette intervened when he saw two teenage girls being abducted on a busy Queens sidewalk, but it wasn’t enough to save the girls from being taken or prevent a uniformed police officer from being killed. As a key witness, Marquette joined forces with Detective Brenda Farrell and other Major Case Squad sleuths who followed every lead and considered everyone a suspect while they tracked down the men who held the teens captive and threatened to kill a Queens Supreme Court judge’s granddaughter if a favorable verdict wasn’t handed down or the charges dismissed against the gang leader’s brother.
No Escape is the third installment in the Marquette Mysteries. It can, however, be read as a standalone. The fascinating thing about this story is its multiple perspectives. Every character gets to tell their side, even the kidnappers.
Laura Ungureanu – On Line Book Club
I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. No Escape, by Donald Steven Collins is a fast-paced crime story that took me for a rollercoaster ride into the criminal world. The plot is complex, captivating and exciting – a real nail-biting experience for me. The suspense kept me on edge until the end. The characters were well-developed and robust. The story is exceptionally well written. I gave it a five star rating.
Alma Boucher – Readers’ Favorite
Murder in the Marshland
When Mookie Thompson’s body was discovered on the edge of a marshland on the last road out of Queens, two pages of coded messages were found in his pocket. Deciphering the code became as much of a challenge for precinct detectives as finding his killer.
Most people who knew the illiterate 36-year-old petty thief said Mookie didn’t have a mean bone in his body. But when the investigation is turned over to the Cold Case Squad five years later, Detectives Danski and Litchfield discover there was another side of Mookie.
-Alma Boucher, Readers’ Favorite
“Murder in the Marshland is a classic crime fiction – a group of witnesses and plausible suspects. A detached yet fast-paced police procedural that keeps the reader speculating.”
-Khaulah, Online Book Club
The Boy on the Train
Danski and Litchfield Book 5
The divorce was final. Lucia DeLeon said good riddance to her ex-husband Jorge and went on with her life. She was granted full custody of their seven-year-old son Oliver and kept her small Bronx apartment which was only a few blocks from the Yankee Stadium subway station where she worked as a token booth clerk. She needed to get Oliver to school in the morning, however, and that would mean coming in contact with Jorge. She devised a plan where she took Oliver to the Yankee Stadium station and put him on the D-train all alone, and then went to the token booth and punched in. She made sure Oliver was the last passenger to board the train which meant he would be the first to get off when the train pulled into the next stop where Jorge was waiting to walk him to school. It had been their regular routine since school opened the month before and it had gone without a hitch until the second Tuesday in October when the train doors opened and the handsome second-grader wasn’t there.
“The Boy on the Train had me hooked from the first page. The author took a simple plot and turned it into a complex and brilliant story. I thoroughly enjoyed the ending.”
-Michelle Menezes, On Line Book Club
“The Boy on the Train was an interesting read with well developed characters that were skillfully handled. The plot was unpredictable and the events blew my mind.”
-Alma Boucher, Reader’s Favorite
Counterfeit Warrior
Danski and Litchfield Book 4
When Sarah Whitman needed help, the attractive blond-haired nurse called her ex-husband, NYPD Detective Bill Chastain. “Some lunatic is chasing me,” she screamed into her phone. “He’s trying to pull me over and he keeps banging into the rear end of my car.”
Chastain told her to drive directly to the Bayside station house and not to stop for any reason until she got there. But Sarah panicked and pulled to a screeching stop in front of a Chinese take-out on Northern Boulevard when she saw a light in a second-floor window.
Police were already on the scene when Chastain got there and identified the body. Flushing Detective Charlie Wicks investigated the case, but had little information to turn over when the case was reassigned to Cold Case Detectives Steve Danski and Gregory Litchfield seven years later.
“Counterfeit Warrior is an enthralling game of cat and mouse that keeps you on the edge of your seat from the first page until the end.”
-Pikasho Deka, Readers’ Favorite
The Honor Guard
When Major Case Detective Frank Donovan is found dead on his bedroom floor with his off-duty revolver a foot away, police brass are quick to call it suicide.
However, his brother Frank, a high school teacher, is not convinced that his life-long hero and Vietnam veteran took his own life, and hires a private investigator who searches for suspects and delves into the lives of the dysfunctional family.
“The Honor Guard is not your typical mystery book. It gives you a lot to ponder after you finish reading it. Several characters appear to be guilty which makes you want to read it all the way to the end to figure out what happens. It elicited the I didn’t see that coming feeling for me. However, I realized the clues were all there.”
-Khaulah, On Line Book Club
Moving Targets
The Newberry Files Book 10
New York Private eyes Tom Newberry and Barry Noonan took time away from their busy schedule for a three-day fishing getaway at the Willows, a fisherman’s paradise located in a small town in the Catskill Mountains.
They had only seen the Willows in travel brochures, but it seemed to have everything a couple of occasional fishermen could ask for – thirteen winterized cabins surrounded by magnificent oak and maple trees whose leaves had recently turned into a glorious array of Fall colors. There were two well-stocked lakes within a two-mile distance of the Willows, but before Tom and Barry were able to unpack their fishing gear, they were thrust into a homicide investigation that left the local police baffled.
A Murder in Brownsville
Danski and Litchfield Book 3
Original detectives thought Rashad Ramshaw’s murder was the latest in a series of cab driver robberies-gone-wrong along the grizzly ghetto corridors of eastern Brooklyn. But when the investigation was turned over to Cold Case detectives Steve Danski and Gregory Litchfield five years later, hints of a mob execution couldn’t be denied.
“Readers who love sleuth murder mysteries or crime thrillers will have a great time with A Murder in Brownsville by Donald Steven Collins. Buddy cop movies were always some of my favorites to watch while growing up and Collins taps into that genre with masterful expertise. Cold Case Detectives Steve Danski and Gregory Litchfield are back once again with another absorbing installment in the Danski and Litchfield novel series. A Murder in Brownsville follows the two detectives as they investigate the five-year-old murder of New York City cab driver Rashad Ramshaw. Danski and Litchfield are two ingenious cops who follow their instincts and back them up with an incredible work ethic. Collins conveys a realistic portrayal of police investigative work, drawing from his personal experiences as a retired NYPD investigator which adds to the authenticity of the narrative. All in all, a thrilling murder mystery you shouldn’t miss out on. “
-Pikasho Deka, Readers’ Favorite
-Nonso Ok, Online Book Club
While Everyone Was Sleeping
Danski and Litchfield Book 2
“The Police have given up,” Susan Whitlock complained five years after her four-year-old-son was kidnapped from her Upper East Side apartment while she slept soundly in her own bedroom fifteen feet away. “Nobody’s looking for Jake, anymore,” she told friends and anyone who would listen. She begged Cold Case Detective Steve Danski to investigate, calling him the best detective in the city. She held up a six-month old newspaper and slapped her hand against a byline at the top of the page. “You did it once; you can do it again.”
Danski didn’t need to read the story. He knew she was talking about the Barbara Weinstein case.
A Witness to Murder
The Newberry Files Book 9
Alison Crosby is a passenger on the number seven train on the elevated IRT subway line. As she stares vacantly out the window she spots a tall, muscular man holding a knife to a slim, dark-haired woman. The man lunges at the woman as the train goes into a bend. “Did you see that?” Alison asked the other passengers. But they deny seeing the man and the woman.
Alison got off at the next stop and called the police. “I just saw someone get murdered!” she told the 911 operator. But when officers from the local precinct arrived Alison wasn’t able to tell them where the murder took place, only that it happened in a third floor window in one of the many apartment buildings along Roosevelt Avenue. Later when precinct detectives try to blow her off she calls her uncle, retired NYPD Detective Tom Newberry who runs a private detective agency with his former NYPD partner Barry Noonan.
The Face In The Basement Window
Danski and Litchfield Book 1
Prominent Queens defense attorney Sid Weinstein sat watching television on a quiet summer evening, sharing a bowl of popcorn with his daughter Barbara the night before her thirteenth birthday when two masked gunmen stormed into his home, pistol-whipped him, and dragged Barbara outside to a waiting van never to be seen or heard from again.
Information was scarce except for a vague description of the gunmen. Were they disgruntled clients or sexual deviates who’d had their eyes of Barbara for a very long time?
Despite a $50,000 reward and a relentless police investigation, the case remained unsolved and was eventually buried in the files of the Cold Case Squad. Seven years later, Queens Robbery Squad Detectives Steve Danski and Gregory Litchfield arrested Roger Shuster, a drug-addled stickup man who claimed he knew who kidnapped Barbara and where she was being held captive. He was willing to tell the detectives what he knew in exchange for his freedom.
The detectives were anxious, but skeptical. Shuster had been lying to them all day. Could they trust him now?
“The Face in the Basement Window, a Danski and Litchfield novel by Donald Steven Collins, is a punch-in-the-face drama about survival, a gripping tale about Queens Robbery Squad Detectives Steve Danski and Gregory Litchfield’s search for Barbara Weinstein, eight years after her abduction the night before her thirteenth birthday. After receiving a tip from a robbery suspect, the detectives are temporarily assigned to the case. Will they find Barbara before it’s too late and is she still alive after eight years? The account of Barbara’s assault and abuse is heart-wrenching. It was the most brutal part of the book for good reason. You have to understand her pain to feel as if you are there with her. Her desperation and ultimate fate is one you don’t see coming. This novel will keep you turning pages like never before. Readers are warned that this account is a little graphic in some places but this is needed to tell the full story. I highly recommend this novel to lovers of crime fiction. I gave the story a five-star review.”
– Anelynde Smit, Readers’ Favorite
“Great read! Suspenseful and unfortunately it was realistic. I love the characters – couldn’t wait to finish. Read it straight through.”
– Dr. Ray
Murder At Hell Gate Bridge
The Newberry Files Book 8
On a cold Monday morning the naked body of a young blond woman is found at the base of a railway bridge in Queens. When NYPD isn’t able to name a suspect, the victim’s father calls the Newberry Agency. Ace detectives Tom Newberry and Barry Noonan meet up with a gritty radio-car team in Astoria and a pair of female cops in the Bronx that provide some of the answers.
“Murder at Hell Gate Bridge is an enthralling crime story with realistic cop dialog, The story draws you in until you’re too invested to put it down.”
– Adedyo, On Line Book Club
Gift Horse
The Marquette Mysteries Book 2
Two months after being ambushed in his own living room and losing his fiancé, and two close detective friends in a shootout with the brother of Mexican Mafia kingpin Miguel Placido, Kenny Marquette was released from Ashford General Hospital. Going back to the house he had called home for the past dozen years was not an option. The place held too many bad memories.
When he told his former boss, Peter Grafton, that he was thinking of relocating in New York, Grafton gave him the keys to his spacious Upper East Side condo and told him to stay as long as he wanted. Shortly after arriving in the Big Apple Kenny is drawn into an investigation to find the man who killed Grafton’s wife.
– Kathleen Pugliese, Hamburg, Pa.
The Doughboy Murders
The Newberry Files Book 7
Manhattan South Homicide detectives Cynthia Newberry and David Alvarez pursue a crazed gunman who shoots down American soldiers as they stand in front of war memorials and pay honor to men lost in combat.
Meanwhile retired NYPD detectives Tom Newberry and Barry Noonan take on a burglary-gone-wrong case that resulted in the death of four men – two of them police officers.
Chasing the Messiah
The Marquette Mysteries Book 1
After being fired for drinking on duty, former California detective Kenny Marquette takes a job as a uniformed security guard at Grafton-Keating, a local defense plant. His life is suddenly turned upside-down when he finds a broken lock while making his rounds. Shot and nearly killed after going inside to investigate, he later learns that the man who broke into the plant’s “think-tank” was after the blueprints for a laser device designed for the U.S. military and capable of tracking movement in the mountains of Afghanistan as well as deeply underground.
In the hospital, after vowing to find the man who shot him, he meets Albert Livingston, a private investigator who was hired to find the kidnapped daughter of high-powered California attorney Malcolm Smoake. The pair take on the Mexican mafia and the Al Qaeda when Livingston convinces Kenny they are after the same man.
Keeper of the Stones
The Newberry Files Book 6
After getting an early morning call from Queens attorney Angelo Manetti, Tom Newberry and his former NYPD partner Barry Noonan head to Riker’s Island to question Curtis Moore, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War who is accused of committing a savage murder in Far Rockaway Queens on Christmas Eve.
Meanwhile, twelve thousand miles away in Westmeath, Ireland, Brendan McCabe, a man who earned his stripes with the IRA, leaves home on his twenty-first birthday to find a new life in Londonderry, but finds he can’t escape his IRA past.
“From start to finish . . . from New York to Ireland . . . I couldn’t put it down.”
– Bea Polaski – Seaford, NY
Stolen Ashes
The Newberry Files Book 5
“Stolen Ashes” is the fifth book in a series featuring Tom Newberry and Barry Noonan, former detectives with NYPD’s Fugitive Warrant Squad.
After catching the madman who killed four Craigslist prostitutes and dumped their bodies on a beach on Long Island’s south shore, Tom was appointed chief of the town’s twelve-man police department. After four months and one solved murder he gives up the post and returns to the detective agency he opened four years ago. He quickly picks a missing husband case that takes him and Barry to Hudson, NY, a small town thirty miles from the state capital where they learn the man they’re after has good reason to hide.
Meanwhile Tom’s new bride Cynthia returns to Manhattan South Homicide Squad and before she can peel the lid from her tea container she’s assigned a cop-murder to investigate on Manhattan’s West side.
Amazon review by Bea Polaski – Seaford, N.Y.
Final Punishment
The Newberry Files Book 4
In the first story, “The Dozier Boy,” Newberry took a leave of absence from the detective agency he opened with Barry Noonan, his former NYPD partner to become Police Chief in a small beach-town on Long Inland’s south shore, leaving Noonan in charge of the agency while he’s gone. Tom was pressed into action his first day on the job when a first-ever murder was committed in the sleepy beach-town over the Memorial ay weekend.
In the second story, “First, Let’s Kill All the Lawyers,” Noonan received a frantic call from Angelo Manetti, an attorney who supplies a good portion of the work for the agency. Manetti’s dear friend and law associate Jimmy Rizzo was found dead that morning and Manetti feels the detectives in the Forest Hills precinct aren’t up to the task of finding Rizzo’s killer.
In the third story, “The Bounty Hunter,” there is a sudden up-tick in business and Noonan is forced to put on a new investigator – Harry O’Rourke, a former NYPD detective with a checkered past. O’Rourke goes to the Bronx, his least favorite borough, to track down Ron Boom-Boom Bibby, a professional boxer-turned-burglar who skipped-out on his bail. On their way back to Queens O’Rourke spots a van wanted in connection with the abduction of a Manhattan socialite earlier that day. After giving the information to the Bronx detectives, O’Rourke and Bibby join the chase.
Amazon review by Bea – NY.
Murder on the Dunes
The Newberry Files Book 3
Detectives had no answers when the naked bodies of three Craigs List escorts were found on the dunes of Fleming Beach, a small coastal village on Long Island’s South Shore. When pressed by reporters, they couldn’t say if they were connected to the decomposed bodies of eight female sex workers that were discovered twelve miles away wrapped in burlap sacks and left to rot in the thickets along Ocean Parkway, the dumping grounds of the Gilgo Beach Killer.
Was one person responsible for all eleven deaths, or was there a second killer out there, or possibly a cabal?
There was no way of knowing. County detectives said they had their eyes on three suspects. Fleming Beach detectives said they had one person of interest and he wasn’t one of the county detectives’ suspects.
“Murder on the Dunes is captivating – a thrilling and fascinating book filled with suspense.”
-Tim Toby, Online Book Club
“A terrific read – a suspense filled thriller.”
Amazon review by Paki – N.Y.
Amazon review by Annette
Diamond Dogs
The Newberry Files Book 2
Don Collins is the author of “Old Watchdogs,” an aclaimed first novel where he introduces Tom Newberry and Barry Noonan, two hardnosed former detectives from NYPD’s Fugitive Warrant Squad.
When Newberry retired he opened a detective agency just to have something to do. But when a serial killer terrorized unsuspecting women in northern Queens he picked up the scent and he and Noonan joined the chase.
Newberry’s relentless, unconventional, and often maddening style brought criticism from high ranking police brass. But he had done his homework and, in time, his detractors had to admit Newberry was onto something.
In “Diamond Dogs” the hunt is personal. When Noonan’s nephew, Jack McGuire, a Manhattan attorney and former star pitcher for St. John’s University goes missing, Newberry and Noonan do what they do best, and soon the chase is on.
Goodreads review by Adriene
Maureen Buschi
Bob W.
Old Watchdogs
The Newberry Files Book 1
Former Detective Tom Newberry was finding retirement a difficult adjustment. His old NYPD partner Barry Noonan scoffed when Newberry told him he was getting closer to identifying the madman who had gunned down six unsuspecting women on the streets of Northern Queens. “Give it up,” Noonan pleaded. “Our job is done. Let the new breed figure this one out. Our days of solving crimes are behind us, now. We’re not the city’s watchdogs anymore.”
Newberry soon clashed with Sergeant Ray Wheeler, the man Chief of Detectives Frank Armstrong appointed to spearhead the special task force he set up to catch the killer. Wheeler called Newberry a nuisance and threatened to arrest the former sleuth for interfering with an official police investigation. But, in time, Wheeler realized Newberry was onto something.
Goodreads review by Andrew C. –Seoul, Republic of Korea
“This book has it all, Great story line and interesting characters. Captured my attention and made it end too soon.”
Amazon review by Raymond Soluri
“Wonderful read. I couldn’t help thinking if Detective Newberry was here on Long Island investigating the Gilgo Beach murders he would have found the killer(s).”
Goodreads review by Riz, N.Y.
“I really enjoyed reading this book, It kept my interest and I didn’t want to put it down. Really wanted to see how this was going to end.”
Amazon review by Marianne Grosso
Darlene A.