Dan Flanigan’s Private Penis Novels Appear in Naked City

Illustration by Cassondra Jones

After winning awards such as “Best Lawyer” in Kansas City, Missouri, and many more nationally, Dan Flanigan went from spokesman to bloodhound. Flanigan was not entirely satisfied with his extremely successful career as a lawyer, so he wrote his detective stories in his spare time.

His self-published novels, The Peter O’Keefe series, which has received recognition from American Fiction and National Indie Excellence Awards. First published in 2019, he has now released his fourth book while continuing to practice law. Reading his biographies and numerous awards, I began to wonder if he had the same 24 hours in a day as the rest of us. When asked how on earth he finds time for it all, Flanigan says, “Being a workaholic helps. I’ve had a long life, too.”

“I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was a sophomore in high school. A lot of things got in the way. I think one of the biggest things was that I had nothing to write about. I didn’t live enough,” Flanigan says.

After being admitted to the bar in Missouri and New York, he began a highly successful career in financial and real estate law. But that urge to write creatively always seemed to gnaw at him. He decided to leave the courtroom for a few years to open a rehabilitation center in Arizona with his wife Candy to focus on his art.

One of his plays was performed in New York City, but his agent and the theater went bankrupt. He took it as a sign to stop writing. “So I just said, ‘I’m not going to punish myself with all this anymore. I’m just going to become a lawyer and do my own thing,'” Flanigan says. “But it never really leaves you. My wife died in 2011. So I decided to write a book of poetry about her final illness and death. That was kind of the trigger for me to get back into it.”

Photo courtesy of Dan Flanigan

Since breaking the writing seal, he has written a series of novels, a collection of poems, a novella, and a few plays, in addition to his dozens of legal publications. His series of novels follows private investigator Peter O’Keefe, a recovered addict and Vietnam War veteran. His childhood friend, a lawyer, sends him on what seems like an ordinary case, but it ends with O’Keefe in trouble with the mob. The series is set in the 1980s and illustrates the cyclical nature of history. Although the novels follow a continuous narrative, Flanigan says the stories could all stand alone.

The fourth part, An American Tragedywas released in June 2024 and has already received much praise from reviewers of The St. Louis Literary Review and more. The book delves into the satanic panics and childcare/classroom sexual abuse of the 1980s. “I was on a podcast, it was in the U.K., in England. He said, ‘Well, Americans have a moral panic every 20 years.’ And that’s kind of true. So it’s also kind of a cautionary tale,” Flanigan says.

An American Tragedy delves into the child abuse scandals that began to break during the “greed is good” era. When O’Keefe’s daughter’s favorite teacher faces serious accusations, he’s thrown into dilemmas of morality and justice. It’s up to him and his team to determine if it’s herd behavior or reality.

Inspired by the current QAnon tinfoil haters who are stirring up baseless hysteria, Flanigan couldn’t help himself from drawing the historical parallel. “I just went into a whole satanic moral panic just knowing that it was going on, and I said, ‘I can’t let this go. I can’t not talk about this,’” he says.

The themes in the Peter O’Keefe series continued this pattern of emphasizing how the ’80s were not a golden age where everyone and everything was inherently better, but instead looked almost exactly the same as they do today, just with more hairspray. “We just shouldn’t deal with the problems. Maybe we can’t deal with them,” Flanigan says.

Illustration by Cassondra Jones

The previous books in the series, Mink eyes, The Great TiltAnd On lonely roadsalso tie in with contemporary issues such as the endless economic crises, organized crime and widespread panic over frivolous things. The first part of the series was originally written by Flanigan in the 80s.

“I wanted to do a late coming-of-age person. Someone in their 30s, like I was when I was struggling with addiction. I wanted to make it more interesting than just navel-gazing,” Flanigan says. “So I put it in a detective/crime format and maybe that way it’s more interesting for everyone.”

The first novel in the series was inspired by a real case he worked on a mink farm in the Ozarks. “I mean, believe me, my case wasn’t as exciting as what happens in that book,” Flanigan says. His extensive courtroom background and doctorate in history make him an endless source of knowledge, creating a balance of realism and entertainment that many detective and crime novels simply can’t deliver.

Although O’Keefe seemingly fits the whiskey-fueled, troubled-past stereotype of many literary detective novels, Flanigan wanted to approach it from a place of understanding. “I’m a recovering alcoholic and I got sober in the early ’80s and my wife and I started our own treatment center,” he says. “So that’s a theme in the book, but I didn’t want to force it.”

Although An American Tragedy recently came out, Flanigan has already begun work on his next installment. This book is where O’Keefe finally reaches the Grunge Decade. “This next installment will be in 1990/1991. There’s so much to do,” he says.

The next step might be dealing with religious penal camps, foster care, or Playboy.
Making up for lost time, Flanigan’s passion and ideas seem to be pouring out of him. He still works as a lawyer, but he now spends more time developing Peter O’Keefe’s stories. “As long as I can do it. I’m going to bring this whole thing as close to the present as possible,” he says. “And I haven’t gotten past 1988 yet.”

The Peter O’Keefe series is available in full digital or physical copies on Amazon or his website. His poetry collection, Darknessand his novella, Dew dropscan also be purchased online.

After a lifetime of running away from his creative inner world, he finally feels fulfilled in his work and has no plans to transcend eras anytime soon. “I’m not a bestseller, but I’m doing the right thing here,” he says.