Former NYPD detective now on book beat

As a youngster growing up in Brooklyn, Anthony Celano received a priceless education that would serve him well as an NYPD member and, later, as a prolific author.

Celano’s mother worked nights at Pfizer and his father, Enrico, worked days as a sanitation man. Because his siblings were at least seven years older than him, Celano accompanied his father each night to social clubs that once dotted the city’s ethnic enclaves.

“I really wasn’t around other kids very much,” said the 73-year-old Celano, who served with the NYPD from 1974 to 1995, retired as a sergeant assigned to the Detective Bureau, and has since published seven books.

“I didn’t realize it then, but I was observing the dynamics of the clubs and the idiosyncrasies of the members,” said Celano. “By the time I was nine, there was not a card game I couldn’t play.”

Celano, who was born in 1952, first lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was a mix of Italian, Jewish and Black residents; then in Dyker Heights, which was all Italian; and also in Park Slope, which long before it was trendy and fashionable was home to blue-collar Irish residents. He picked up all the colloquialisms along the way.

Celano attended three grammar schools before graduating from Bishop Ford High School in Park Slope.

His initial ambition was to be a butcher. His mother had other ideas and insisted he attend St. John’s University. But a disinterested and distracted Celano flunked four of six courses and joined the National Guard.

He enrolled in St. Francis College, which in a roundabout way changed the course of his life. While headed to school one day, two uniformed NYPD cops boarded the bus en route to court.

Celano noted that they did not pay the fare and was impressed by their holstered firearms. Most importantly, he took notice of the comfortable banter they had with each other.

“They seemed very happy,” said Celano. “They were joking around, laughing and having a good time.”

In November 1973, Celano was appointed to the former Housing Police Department. He declined the opportunity to join the former Transit PD and was sworn in to the NYPD in June 1974.

Celano was first assigned to the Ninth Precinct on Manhattan’s Lower East Side but eventually made his way to the Narcotics Division’s DEA Task Force and the Queens District Attorney’s Squad, where he served as a detective under legendary Lieutenant Remo Franceschini.

Franceschini was a warhorse in the battle against organized crime and Celano, always a self-starter, became a workhorse in the elite unit. Franceschini, who was known as much for his investigative acumen as his gargantuan ego, gave Celano tremendous latitude.

‘A bit of a rule-breaker’

One weekend morning, Celano and a partner were dispatched by Franceschini to sit on the Queens home of a notorious gangster. A neighborhood kid reported their presence to the mobster, who angrily stormed out of his home, unshaven, twitching and nearly frothing at the mouth.

“His head took up the whole driver’s side window of our Buick Skylark,” said Celano. “My partner has his hand on his gun, but I just let him talk. Eventually, I got out of the vehicle and explained that we were just doing our job. I told him that we had a boss just like he had a boss.”

Realizing Celano and his partner worked for Franceschini, the mobster told them to tell their boss, a former amateur boxer, to meet him in the schoolyard and to bring a machine gun along with him.

After leaving the NYPD in 1995, Celano ran a successful corporate investigative firm called Full Security, Inc  His clients included Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns and Rutgers University.

A health scare caused him to pack it in at age 65, and Celano found himself at a personal crossroads. Having been an avid reader of detective novels featuring Charlie Chan, Sam Spade, Sherlock Holmes and others, he realized that none of the authors who had imagined those characters had law enforcement experience.

Thinking he might have something to offer the genre, Celano wrote and then published his first novel, “The Case of Two in the Trunk: A Sergeant Markie Mystery,” in 2019. It is currently being shopped around Hollywood.

Celano’s seventh book in the Sergeant Markie series, “The Case of the Deadly Diary,” was published in May.

“Sergeant Markie, as well as all the characters in all my books, are a combination of a lot of people, including myself,” explained Celano. “He’s basically honest, but a bit of a rule-breaker.”

The other characters are a compilation of the people Celano observed, as a youth in the social clubs, as well as during his police and corporate careers.

Celano has been married to his wife, Anna, who is also his proofreader, for 51 years. They are the parents of Anthony, an NYPD sergeant assigned to the 72 Precinct in Brooklyn, and Briana, a teacher at Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan.

He currently runs a monthly networking luncheon in Greenwich Village attended by writers and business people from a vast array of industries. 

“People from every walk of life want to write a book,” said Celano. “It is rewarding to provide encouragement and work with them to foster those dreams.”