A nation in panic. A teacher accused. O’Keefe steps into the storm.

During the 1988 Satanic Panic, fear is a weapon—and justice is on trial.

The summer of 1988 is boiling with hysteria. Across America, accusations of hidden cults and ritual crimes are destroying reputations, families, and lives. Peter O’Keefe wants nothing more than to stabilize his PI agency and rebuild trust with his daughter. But when her favorite teacher, Miss Ginny, is charged with unspeakable crimes, everything changes.

From the first moment O’Keefe hears the case, he senses the truth has been drowned out by fear. Evidence is thin. Allegations shift. And the figures driving the prosecution—shadowy child-protection zealots—are more interested in convictions than justice.

Audiobook Bookstagram Tour: 24th Sept – 3rd Oct
Genre: Crime | Mystery | Thriller 
Length: 12 hours 23 minutes

Taking the case means stepping into a political firestorm. It means risking the fragile progress he’s made with his daughter. And it means standing almost alone against a culture consumed by paranoia.

As O’Keefe digs deeper, he uncovers manipulated testimonies, hidden agendas, and a system buckling under public pressure. The closer he gets to exposing the truth, the more dangerous the case becomes—for Miss Ginny, for the children, and for O’Keefe himself.

In a nation blinded by fear, one man must decide what justice is worth—and who he’s willing to become to defend it.

Meet Peter O’Keefe—scarred, relentless, and a hero for our times.

My Review

I can’t stop thinking about this book. It really hit me in the gut. And my children being of a similar age as the ‘victims’ (four and two in 1988), I struggle to imagine the way they were interrogated by the so-called child protection agents, and even by their own parents.

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists something like this is known as the “illusion of truth” effect. And we are talking about adults regardless of education, intelligence or background. And the child protection agents are similar to the propagandists.

Children as young as four or five have no idea about the kind of atrocities they were supposed to have been subjected to. But if you tell them enough times that it did, and shame them into believing they are stupid, unfair to their friends, or repressing the truth if they don’t remember, then what do you have but coercion and another form of child abuse? The use of anatomically correct dolls and puppets was used to show the children what supposedly happened. Some of it appears so outlandish that it makes you wonder how the parents fell for it.

But this was the ‘satanic panic’ (or moral panic) of the late 1980s referred to in the book. It almost took hold in the UK, but I was not aware of it at the time. You only have to look at current politics in the US to see how certain things can take hold almost to the point of hysteria, and then come over here. I’m just not sure we are quite so easily deluded – apologies to our friends over the pond. Maybe it’s more to do with apathy than anything else.

I can’t say I ‘enjoyed’ the book, because it’s not the sort of book you can enjoy as such. It made me sad, angry and ultimately frustrated. I so wanted a positive outcome, I wanted it not to have happened, but this was a story about the truth, not some Hollywood, happy-ever-after, sugary slop.

And please be aware that some of the details were extremely unsavoury and hard to read. But don’t give up – it’s well worth sticking with it.

Many thanks to @lovebookstours for inviting me to be part of the #AnAmericanTragedy audiobook tour.

About the Author

Dan Flanigan is an award-winning novelist, playwright, poet, and former attorney. Holding a PhD in History and a JD, he enjoyed a distinguished legal career specialising in civil rights and financial law before turning his lifelong passion for creative writing into a full-time pursuit.

Since 2019, Dan has published four novels in his acclaimed Peter O’Keefe detective series, along with a poetry collection, Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death, and a collection of short fiction, Dewdrops. He has also written several stage plays and continues to champion child protection through his work on the Board of Directors of Childhood USA, the US arm of the World Childhood Foundation.

Dan divides his time between Kansas City, New York, and Los Angeles, while finding inspiration in the natural beauty of the Catskills, the San Juan Islands, and British Columbia.

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