Stephen Colcord books

A tip from New Jersey authorities points Deputy Sheriff Mark Pollard and the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force to the New Hampshire home of the homicide suspect’s mother.  While traversing the Granite State, information gleaned from warrants, surveillance, and even some unsuccessful interviews, narrows their focus.  Through the sarcasm and ribbings of long days, bonds between members of the team strengthen as they work to gain the upper hand.  While hunting a man they’ve never met, the group also forges an unlikely bond with their prey.

Though a crime fiction novel, “Collateral Lead” provides a realistic and inside view at how teams like this track dangerous fugitives across the United States every single day.  Follow along and see why Ernest Hemingway stated, “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”

The second installment of the Deputy Mark Pollard Series, "Failure to Register" starts at the completion of the premier novel in the series, "Collateral Lead."  Pollard and the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force are sent to locate a suspect in the attempted abductions of local teenage girls. The team races against the uneasy feeling that a tragedy is imminent while battling a local police chief who has placed saving face above finding the absconding sex offender.  

The chase leads Pollard back to his native area of New Hampshire, the short Atlantic coastline.  Though raised in the location, he has little experience acting as a lawman there.  When his own father becomes a potential source of information, the old neighborhood and its inhabitants force Pollard to confront some of his own unsettled history, and how he feels about where he was raised.  

A young domestic abuser is on the run, leaving behind his hospitalized victim. Working in his home county in New Hampshire, Deputy Mark Pollard and the Fugitive Task Force go to work trying to locate the accused. With a brutalized and hesitant victim and a suspect with multiple local connections in the drug trade, the team has to be sharp. Figuring out which sources to press and which sources to praise becomes difficult to decipher as the families and friends of both the victim and the accused transition from hostile to helpful and back.

As the hunt for the fugitive heats up, investigators turn their attention to a new crime, with an unexpected suspect.