Tom Newberry leaves his detective agency in the hands of Barry Noonan, his former NYPD partner, when he becomes Police Chief in Fleming Beach, a quiet village on Long Island's south shore. When the Memorial Day weekends kicks off with a dead body found in the doorway of a gas station on his first day on the job Tom assigns the case to his protege Jeremy Demchek, a Fleming Beach detective and former beat-cop from one of New York's west side precincts. Meanwhile Barry, aided by his two part-time investigators, takes on a murder case of his own when Jimmy Rizzo, a high-priced Queens attorney is found dead in his Forest Hills office. Caught short-handed when a Jamaica bail-bondsman calls the agency, Barry hires Harry O'Rourke, a former NYPD detective with a checkered past, to go after Ron Bibby, a boxer-turned-burglar, and bring him back to face trial."

Elaine Leblanc, a student at Queens College, hadn't called home in a month. Her aunt in Arizona contacted detectives in NYPD's Jackson Heights precinct. When they couldn't help she called the Newberry Agency. The investigation led Tom Newberry and Barry Noonan into the sordid life of Craigslist escorts and prostitutes and put them on the trail of a man who had a penchant for killing them after he had his kicks.

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.

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.