In Flanigan’s series mystery, a private detective must find the truth when a daycare teacher is accused of sexual abuse and Satanist beliefs.

In 1988, PI Peter O’Keefe is trying to be a good father to his 11-year-olddaughter, Kelly, while also establishing his own agency. Virginia Montrose, known to her students as Miss Ginny, is a compassionate, dependable, and smart daycare teacher, and so it’s a shock when she’s accused of molesting several children. The white investigators also suspect another daycare employee, Marvin Smith—a Black janitor who was friendly with Montrose (who’s white). The accusations, which also assert that suspects are Satanists, sound unbelievable, but several parents are willing to have their children testify against Montrose. Ralph Merkel becomes the leader of the parent group, and he introduces them to lawyer Perry Slotkin, who notes that the amount of money they could receive from the school’s insurance will depend on the extent of the abuse. Montrose’s defense lawyer, Scott Hartley, asks O’Keefe to help on the case, and he’s initially reluctant. But he soon believes, upon examining the case, that the defendants are innocent. Prosecutors Donovan Dolinar and Rhonda Tarwater have an army of experts on their side at trial, clearly determined to do anything to put Montrose and Smith in prison no matter what the evidence says. In this fourth installment in Flanigan’s series, O’Keefe faces off against enemies pretending to be crusaders for justice and confronts how unfounded beliefs can take hold—all while trying to win a complex case: “It was pin the tail on the donkey at a sprint alright—for the highest of stakes.” Throughout, he’s a relatable hero who brings reason and intelligence to the case, and he also deals with his own understandable shock at the events unfolding around him. This story is clearly inspired by real events from the so-called Satanic Panic of the 1980s, and Flanigan handles the material with care and sincerity. Montrose and Smith’s struggles feel realistic, and the bittersweet ending will allow readers to strongly connect with them.

A skillfully written legal thriller that’s steeped in real-life legal history.

In this third installment of a mystery series, a private eye takes on another dangerous case.

After battling drug-smuggling operations and Mafia kingpins, the Vietnam veteran–turned–divorced gumshoe Peter O’Keefe returns to fight for his personal safety. Novelist and litigator Flanigan’s latest mystery picks up after the cliffhanger ending in The Big Tilt (2020), when the investigator was nearly blown to bits by a car bomb in late 1987. The action resumes three months later as a PTSD–saddled O’Keefe slowly heals from extensive “flash-fried” burns with no leads on a suspect, though the local Mafioso faction, the “Outfit,” “a nest of vicious killers and thieves,” seems like the plausible perpetrator. After media coverage of the bombing, folks from O’Keefe’s ex-wife to his landlord fear for their safety when he’s nearby. Joined by his investigative firm partner, George Novak, and a bomb-sniffing dog, O’Keefe pieces together minor clues but becomes “idiotically determined to poke his stick around in the Outfit snake pit.” The detective insinuates himself into the crosshairs of mob boss Paul Marcone, hoping to call a truce. But O’Keefe only stirs up a hornets’ nest of nefarious henchmen. Also hot on the Outfit’s trail is determined United States attorney and Senate hopeful Russell Lord, who’s dedicated to rooting out the faction after putting former crime boss Carmine Jagoda in jail. But after Jagoda’s sudden death and his likely successor’s mysterious disappearance, Lord fears a Mafia “dynastic succession” reshuffling could spur more violence. As O’Keefe draws closer to tailing the Outfit, Flanigan pumps up the suspenseful action, which has become a reliable facet of the series. Though the author’s mobster plot has more convoluted complexities than in previous mysteries, the story accelerates at a decent clip thanks to a wealth of well-developed characters, like Jagoda’s daughter, Rose, who is also the wife of the missing mobster; Marcone; and a bevy of crooked thugs. A murder, a shootout, and an incriminating audio recording ramp up the action, and despite a deadly snake bite, O’Keefe remains in top investigative form. An integral subplot involves his young daughter, Kelly, who morphs into a fierce, preteen supersleuth investigating her mother’s shady fiance. By the novel’s conclusion, Flanigan will capture readers’ hearts with hopes for a future O’Keefe family reunion.          

The further exhilarating adventures of an unbeatable detective, packed with tantalizing loose ends.

A writer grieves the loss of his wife to an aggressive form of cancer in this collection of poetry.

In a concise introduction, Flanigan connects this noteworthy volume’s title to the first 15 poems, each of which features a candle printed above it that would be extinguished one by one during the traditional ceremony. He explains: “The structure, mood, and dramatic progression of this ancient ritual seemed to perfectly suit my mournful purpose.” The first offering, “Sonora,” is an impressive work that creatively paints a vivid desert landscape: “Roadrunners like wicked witches arrogantly prancing.” It also sets the stage for what is to follow. With the benefit of hindsight, the author realizes that this memory from the couple’s early days suggests a youthful disregard for mortality. Upon closer inspection, danger lurks beneath the surface, represented by a hawk stalking desert creatures: “Stopping every few yards and glancing sharply to the sky / From which Death swoops down and strikes low. / We did not know then what we do know now— / You are, you become, then are no more.” Most of the poems feature free verse while three longer works appear as prose poems and deftly use the second person as Flanigan directly addresses his wife. With a journallike feel, these denser texts present a timeline as readers learn the details of his wife’s battles with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In addition to self-recrimination, the author makes the physical and emotional tolls of the disease palpable, recounting her decline, her last words, and her death. Curiously, one of these longer works, “A Trip to the Underworld,” breaks out of the prose format and ends with a traditional rhyme scheme. Similarly, the 15th poem, “Strepitus: Like a Fallen Empire,” presents a rhyming pattern and a heart-wrenching finality: “Yes, may we take solace in the certainty of our defeat, / We gave it almost all that it was due, / We were braver than we knew.” The remaining 10 pieces include visions of older relatives and a poignant moment shared by father and daughter. One of the standouts here is a moving tribute to Flanigan’s grandmother, “The Irish in America: Annie D.” Despite all of the challenges she confronted, the author’s “Nana” was the best he could have asked for in the face of uneven parenting.

Sharp writing and keen imagery underscore poetic themes of love and loss, memory and regret.

A private investigator, scarred inside and out, works a case involving money, murder, and mink.

In Flanigan’s thriller series opener, set in the mid-1980s, detective and former Marine Peter O’Keefe takes an assignment from some investors in a mink farm to find out what’s happened to their money. The first few years that the farm operated, investors were paid fabulous returns, but now checks have stopped coming, and Lenny Parker, the man in charge, has disappeared. His secretary, Jane, who O’Keefe deduces was in love with her boss, said the normally sweet Lenny had recently become “like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” after taking on a new investor known as Mr. Canada. When O’Keefe surprises Lenny’s beautiful wife, Tag, at the mink farm, she is planning to vamoose in her Jaguar. What first appeared to be a Ponzi scheme turns into something deadly when thugs also show up, and mink are not the only things slaughtered. No regular guy, O’Keefe wrestles with war memories, battles alcoholism, and fills his van with grenades. And now he falls under the spell of the aqua-eyed wife of the man he is hunting. He also has issues with his ex-wife, and he frequently disappoints their preteen daughter, Kelly, with failed plans. He also lies mightily when he tells Kelly he doesn’t carry a gun (he totes both an M-16 and a .38 pistol). O’Keefe’s character is honestly written as a deeply flawed man with scars and distressing memories that stretch from childhood to action in the military; he’s a private eye who sees life as having a downward trajectory. Shocking violence and thrilling, edge-of-your-seat scenes fill many pages of this enjoyable novel. Descriptions are rich, but some readers will find Kelly’s lengthy sketch of her dad as a handsome man with hazel eyes that “changed from brown to green and sometimes almost to blue, depending on what he wore” a bit uncomfortable. A strong anti-fur message comes across organically.

An engaging thriller reveals that crime involving mink can be a whole different animal.

A blackmail case spirals out of control and poisons a private investigator’s friendships in this second novel in Flanigan’s Peter O’Keefe series, following Mink Eyes(2019).

This story takes place in “a spot of rough country that urban development had bypassed, the expanding city metaphorically closing its eyes and holding its nose.” Its main characters—O’Keefe, a rough-around-the-edges private investigator with a conscience; and O’Keefe’s operatives, the mysterious Sara Slade and the womanizing ex-cop George Novak—seem to have emerged straight from the pages of classic pulp novels. Unlike the straightforward pulp formula, however, Flanigan interweaves multiple plotlines, a strategy that may leave readers wondering why major characters frequently fall by the wayside. In the first chapter, Carmine Jagoda, a Mafia don on his deathbed, charges Robert Sciorra and Paul Marcone with the task of murdering O’Keefe for damaging their criminal enterprise. Instead of building on this opening premise, however, the following chapters focus on a blackmail case. Mike Harrigan, O’Keefe’s lawyer and childhood friend, hires him to help determine the legitimacy of claims made by Beverly Bronson, another troubled friend—namely, that untrustworthy entrepreneur Jerry Jensen is the father of her adult son and murdered a woman long ago. As O’Keefe works this case, the mob-related plot simply devolves into a rivalry between Sciorra and Marcone. As a result, the mobsters unexpectedly become the least dangerous people in the novel, as O’Keefe learns when Harrigan comes under federal investigation and a car bomb nearly kills him. The author’s offbeat narrative focus doesn’t doom the work, however. Indeed, Flanigan manages to conjure deft, hard-boiled, but literary prose that’s reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s best work.

A gritty and eloquent crime novel.

Novelist and practicing attorney Flanigan’s debut story collection ably depicts ordinary people making the best of bad circumstances.

In the leading story, “Some Cold War Blues,” good-natured 11-year-old Jack lives at the mercy of a hostile, hard-drinking stepfather—a man “as black and stony and desiccated as cinders”—and his distant mother. His cursed childhood seems soothed only by the swearwords he learns from his pal Rex Jefferson and outdoor time spent with his buddies. But what begins as an epic neighborhood snowball fight turns violent when older interlopers relentlessly ambush their wintry forts. The title novella digs deeper into the human condition as Ray, a drug rehabilitation counselor and recovered addict, forms troubled and emotionally destabilizing relationships with his clients. Ray oversees the progress of a motley assortment of addicts. Here, the original scene-setting is as striking as the characters themselves. For example, Angel Day, an attractive participant (and recognizable semifamous singer) in one of Ray’s groups, must but cannot suppress her sexuality: “She has studied and displayed it for so long that it has captured every pore and cell of her and will not let go.” Finally, “On the Last Frontier” spotlights the melodramatic dynamic between Katie and Reuben, a restless and dysfunctional pair surviving in a small, tightly knit Alaskan village. Flanigan has a flare for description as he sets up scenes and expertly carves out characterizations; Jack’s icy snowball fight hums with the same palpable excitement as the chatter within the rehab’s recovery rooms. As different as each tale may be, they share a common thread of human perseverance, tenacity, and hope. Flanigan is an entertaining, skillful storyteller; his stories will appeal to both younger and adult readers of realistically drawn fiction.

Three compelling, impressively crafted tales united by authenticity and grace.