“On Lonesome Roads” Receives Glowing Review from Kirkus Reviews

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.

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