Daniela Franz
The system never forgets. The collateral never stops.
Dead Collateral is an action/spy thriller trilogy set in contemporary Europe. At its center is Cole Asher, a former black-ops contractor who walked away from organized violence after a single operation went wrong — leaving a journalist dead and a boy without a father. When the past comes calling, Cole discovers the system never forgets — and there is always someone willing to use what you love to pull you back into the shadows.
Setting
Contemporary Europe
Genre
Action Thriller, Spy Fiction
Books
3
Series started
May 10, 2026
Three years of silence. Forty-five minutes to break it.
Cole Asher doesn't exist. Until a locker activates at Berlin Hauptbahnhof — and he has forty-five minutes to choose between staying invisible or stepping back into the machinery of death that broke him.
They know his guilt. They've measured his love. They think they can break him.
Four cities. Four lockers. Four pages of controlled demolition. But the file makes one miscalculation: it assumes guilt is the only fuel.
A man described. A system dismantled. A boy saved.
In Stuttgart, Cole finds the fifth page — the one that predicts his every move. And the signature of the man who killed David Mercer. The death wasn't collateral. It was architecture.
Daniela Franz writes action and spy thrillers that combine tactical precision with moral complexity. Her protagonists operate in the shadows, caught between loyalty, betrayal, and survival. Her prose is tense, relentless, and rich with authentic detail.
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