Donald E. McQuinn (born 1930 in Winthrop, Massachusetts) is an American best-selling author, and former U.S. Marine.
McQuinn graduated from high school in Texas, and attended the University of Washington on a Navy scholarship. He served 20 years in the Marines, retiring in 1971 as a major, before becoming an author.
In September 1998 he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest while on vacation in Hawaii and became the first person saved by the police department's recent deployment of automated external defibrillators.
A third book in the Captain Lannat series was announced by the publisher as "a work in progress", but remains unfinished or unpublished.