An American Tragedy: A Peter O'Keefe Novel

by Dan Flanigan, A.W. Miller (Narrator), Jennifer McCool (Narrator)

A nation in panic. A teacher accused. O’Keefe faces his toughest case yet.

The summer of 1988 is ablaze—not just with heat, but with hysteria. As Satanic Panic sweeps the nation, innocent lives hang in the balance.

Private detective Peter O’Keefe never expected to be drawn into the storm, but when his daughter’s beloved teacher "Miss Ginny" is accused of unspeakable crimes, he can’t turn away.

The case reeks of mass hysteria and hidden agendas, but standing against the tide could cost O’Keefe everything. As he fights to unravel the truth, he’s forced to go toe-to-toe with shadowy child protection figures more interested in securing convictions than justice.

With lives shattered and the weight of a nation’s paranoia pressing down, O’Keefe must risk it all to expose the truth before it’s too late. In a world consumed by fear, will justice prevail—or will the innocent be lost forever?

A gripping crime thriller steeped in real-world hysteria, An American Tragedy is a heart-stopping tale of courage, deception, and the high price of seeking the truth.

Audible Audio

Published July 3, 2025

About the author

Dan Flanigan is a novelist, playwright, poet, and practicing lawyer. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Rice University and J.D. from the University of Houston. He taught Jurisprudence at the University of Houston and American Legal History at the University of Virginia. His first published book was his Ph.D. dissertation, The Criminal Law of Slavery and Freedom, 1800-1868.

He moved on from academia to serve the civil rights cause as a school desegregation lawyer, followed by a long career as a finance attorney in private law practice. He became a name partner in the Polsinelli law firm in Kansas City, created its Financial Services practice, chaired its Real Estate & Financial Services Department for two decades, and established the firm’s New York City office and served as its managing partner until October 2022. View his legal bio at https://www.polsinelli.com/profession....

Taking a break from the law practice for two years in 1983-1985, he and his wife, Candy, founded Sierra Tucson, a prominent alcohol and drug treatment center located in Tucson, Arizona.

Recently, he has been able to turn his attention to his lifelong ambition—creative writing. In 2019 he released a literary trifecta including "Mink Eyes," the first in the Peter O’Keefe series, "Dewdrops," a collection of shorter fiction, and "Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death."

"Tenebrae" is a bracelet of verse and prose poems dedicated to his wife, Candy, to honor her last illness and death and their 40-plus years together, a work that has been described as “celebratory” and “heartbreaking and exquisite.” It was a Finalist for both the 2022 IAN Book of the Year in Poetry and in the 2022 American Book Fest “Best Book” Award in the Legacy: Autobiography/Memoir category. The audiobook version will be released in 2026.

Dan’s novella, "Dewdrops," was originally written for the stage and enjoyed a successful full-cast staged reading at the Theatre of the Open Eye in New York. Its then well-known and regarded director John Cappellatti described the play as a “powerful” work about “addiction in America—addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, danger, power, and to finding the Answer,” with characters that are “well drawn, real, and actors love to portray them.” The short story collection comprised of "Dewdrops," "On the Last Frontier" and "Some Cold War Blues" was a Finalist in the 2022 Independent Author Network Book of the Year for Short Story Collection and a 2022 American Book Fest “Best Book” Award Finalist in Fiction-Short Story.

In 2025, Dan published a second edition of "Dewdrops" to include a new story, "Dude." As an Editor’s Pick, Book Life called it “a short story collection that’s as heartbreaking, raw, and real as it is beautiful and tender” and said “Flanigan’s prose is melodic and hypnotizing, jarring and chaotic, exploring the human condition through a series of tense, often melancholic tales that still capture the imagination with their reality, sweetness, and sadness.” Writer's Digest said it more simply, "The writing is truly flawless." "Dewdrops" was a 2025 Global Book Awards Gold Medalist.

"The Big Tilt," the second book in the Peter O’Keefe series, was published in 2020 and has been described as “deft, hard-boiled, but literary prose that’s reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s best work.” "The Big Tilt" won the 2022 National Indie Excellence Award for Crime Fiction and was a Finalist for the 2022 Independent Author Network’s Book of the Year in Thriller/Suspense. In 2023, "The Big Tilt" was a Legacy Fiction finalist for the prestigious Eric Hoffer Award as well as making the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize Short List.

"On Lonesome Roads," published in 2022, is the third book in the series and was a Notable 100 Book in the 2022 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition and 2023 IPPY Silver Medalist in the Best Mystery/Thriller eBook category. Most notably, "On Lonesome Roads" followed up "The Big Tilt’s" 2022 NIEA Cri

Reviews

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book was published in 2025, the story is set in 1988 during the time of the satanic panic that gripped America in the 1980s. A book called "Michelle Remembers" kicked off the panic and is referenced sevaral times in this book. The story involves Peter O'Keefe working for Scott Hartley, an attorney defending a teacher accused of molestation and performing satanic rituals on kids along with the janitor at the school. Hartley faced an uphill battle dealing with a corrupt prosecutor and judge and a social services department that pretty much crafted the narrative children used in court along with "helping" them remember the "abuse." The dialogue is clunky and the plot seems to move quickly without a lot of context. Despite this, "An American Tragedy" is one of the most important books written in 2025 because it challenges the notion that people in authority should always believed. People still had a blind trust in authority figures in the 1980s, which led to rampant corruption and genuine abuse on the part of public officials. While things have changed they haven't changed for the better. In the words of The Who "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[Katherine Tricker]

I haven't DNF'd because it's not a good story, but because I feel I know exactly where this is going and I'm struggling to bother keeping going.