PAST RELEASES

The Drifter's Wheel

Fever Devilin Series #5
June 2008

Fever Devilin, born and raised amongst the hill country folk of the Georgia Appalachians, left home a long time ago and pursued an education, then a career, in the wider outside world. A folklorist by inclination and profession, he left the strange world of academia behind to return to his family-home in the if-anything-stranger mountain town he grew up in. But oddness follows Fever wherever he goes and Blue Mountain, Georgia is no different.

When a man shows up at his house, claiming to be over a hundred years old even though he looks like he’s in his 30’s, Fever is pretty sure his guest is not right. When the man starts to wave a gun around, then falls suddenly asleep immediately afterward, Fever thinks he’s both "not right" and "dangerous" and slips out to call the sheriff. The sheriff, Fever’s childhood friend, has been hearing reports of this particular vagrant all day but before he can get out there, the man disappears.

In the early morning, the body of man that fits the description of the mysterious vagrant is found by the side of the road, shot to death. But, although the body is wearing the same clothes that the vagrant was, it isn’t the same person.

"Unsettling and engaging throughout, this solidly enjoyable tale will keep readers guessing until the end."

~ Publisher's Weekly

A Widow's Curse

Fever Devilin Series #4
July 2007

Fever Devilin, a folklorist by inclination and training, was born and raised amongst the hill-country folk of the Georgia Appalachians and it was there that he returned once he decided to leave academia. And he’s the perfect person to turn to when the owner of a mysterious medallion, one with some connection to the area, wants to uncover the provenance of the piece. On the surface, it sounds simple enough but in Fever’s life, nothing is ever simple. Especially when the medallion’s owner is found dead, murdered, in Fever’s own house and the papers of Fever’s late grandfather, of no intrinsic value, are stolen. And Fever himself in the prime suspect in the murder.

The only clue to the truth behind these confusing events is the medallion itself, which is somehow tied to Fever’s secretive family’s history. With someone trying to frame him for the murder and other hidden forces hot on the trail of the medallion itself, Fever is wedged tightly between the proverbial ‘rock’ and equally proverbial ‘hard place.’ And the only possible way out is buried within the uncomfortable hidden truths about his own family that Fever has spent years trying to avoid.

"Well-drawn characters, a beautifully described setting, and the author's use of folklore and the idea of shared stories defining our sense of the past add depth to this fourth in the series."

~ Sue O'Brien, Booklist

A Minister's Ghost

Fever Devilin Series #3
December 2005

Fever Devilin is a folklorist who fled the fevered halls of academia to return home to the Blue Mountain region of the Georgia Appalachians and a hopefully quiet life. While on a trip collecting folklore, Fever spots an apparition at a railroad crossing. Such apparitions are traditionally omens of evil, and when he returns home he finds his suspicions are accurate: his friend Lucinda's two nieces have been killed in a suspicious accident. As he consoles Lucinda, Fever promises to investigate the girls' deaths. His promise leads him through a maze of train-hopping drifters, old ghost stories, and the wild ravings of an itinerant preacher - as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the tales that are told and the visions that are seen.

"A MINISTER'S GHOST is a whodunit with a southern accent and a Jungian subtext...By far DePoy's best [so far], with top-notch plotting, full-blown characters (even that albino dwarf) and a bit of Shakespeare thrown in."

~ Kirkus Reviews

The Witch's Grave

Fever Devilin Series #2
February 2004

Fever Devilin was raised amongst the hill-country people of the deep Georgia Appalachians and their seemingly simple folk ways are in his blood and his soul. His own family, however, was another matter and at sixteen he left home for college, returning only rarely and always under protest. In the years to come, Fever became a noted folklorist of the Appalachian region and a college professor. He never quite adjusted to the realities of city life and academic politics, and has now returned to the deceptively quiet life amongst his people. But below the surface, nothing is ever as quiet and simple as it appears.

When Truevine Deveroe, a local girl reputed to be a witch, goes missing and the local mortician, acknowledged as an unpleasant character, turns up dead near Devilin's home, Able Carter, fiancé of the missing girl, is suspected of killing them both. Tied by friendship and long-term enmity to all of the principals, Fever finds himself in the midst of a very difficult situation. To make matters even worse, the brothers of the missing girl are determined to find Carter - who has taken it on the lam - and administer their own brand of justice. With precious little time, lives at stake, and a missing girl to be found, Devilin must unravel the mystery behind this perplexing series of events. A series of events somehow related to the hidden history of the area and the old folk legend of the witch's grave.

The Devil's Hearth

Fever Devilin Series #1
January 2003

Fever Devilin is a folklorist and a very recent ex-academic who has decided to return to his family home in the Georgia Appalachians. But his homecoming isn’t quite what he expected---he arrives at the home he once shared with his now-deceased parents to find a corpse on his front porch, evidence that someone has been living in the house without his knowledge, and someone in the woods around the house taking shots at him with a rifle. Simply put, it could be better.

Instead it gets worse---especially when Fever finds out that the corpse is that of a half-brother whom he never knew existed. This discovery leads him to think that the actual intended target of the murderer might well have been Fever himself. As he probes the mystery in this tight-knit and often closed-mouthed community, home to many of his best and worst memories, it quickly becomes ovious that there are some of the town’s secrets are deadlier than others.

"Arresting . . .exquisite."

-~ Kirkus Reviews

Dead Easy

Flap Tucker Series #5
October 2000

Threatening notes. Grisly packages promising worse to come. On a dark street outside a nightclub called Easy, a man is gunned down—by a handsome killer everyone thought was dead. Someone is stalking club owner Dalliance Oglethorpe, someone from a past she thought she had left behind. Flap Tucker, Dally's knight in not-so-shining armor, prides himself on seeing through reality's illusions. But what he discovers about his longtime love will catch him blind.

There is a lot Flap doesn't know—and a lot he has to find out, soon, about himself and the woman he thought he knew best. But Dally wants Flap to keep his distance. She thinks he may have had a hand in murder. And Flap has reason to suspect Dally herself. If they are to make it through the long, dark night, Flap must find the real killer, a real motive, and the real truth behind Dally's lost years—and the secrets she has never been able to reveal—before it's too late.

"Sit back and spend some smooth, sly Southern time with one of the coolest P.I.'s ever to open a bottle of Château Cantenac-Brown."

-- Charles Mathes, author of The Girl at the End of the Line

Dancing Made Easy

Flap Tucker Series #4
November 1999

For the beautiful victims, it was the last dance. For a psychic detective, the waltz has just begun....

Lesson One: The Tarantella

She had been young, pretty, a budding ballerina. Now, beneath a streetlight in the cold Atlanta dawn, she's pirouetting at the end of a rope, a note pinned to her lapel: "Number One—The Tarantella." A dance of evil has commenced, a sinister medley of malice that will unfold over time as a ruthless killer leads Flap Tucker through the steps of a pattern only he can unravel.

Lesson Two: The Tango

The next dangling corpse sends Flap spinning blindly through Atlanta's underside, where two mobsters duel violently for love and money, a brilliant musician sidelines in secrets, and a monster circles close to Flap's cherished friend, Dalliance Oglethorpe. As he struggles to find his footing—blocked from his Zenlike ability to glimpse the truth behind reality's curtain—the murderous beat quickens around him, and a deadly dancer moves in perfect time to claim one last partner.

"The Flap Tucker mysteries are real jewels. Phillip DePoy has style!"

--Debbie Macomber, bestselling author of Moon Over Water

Easy as One, Two, Three

Flap Tucker Series #3
January 1999

EASY AS ONE, TWO, THREE takes Flap and Dalliance to the hills in search of a lost girl, snake handling preachers, the ghost of Lost Mountain, and an all too urban connection with Atlanta toughs Moose and Hat.

"There seems to be a feel to Phillip DePoy's Southern mysteries rarely seen in other novelists' works. The Flap Tucker novels are getting better and better."

-~ Harriet Klausner, Book Browser

"Anytime Phillip DePoy wants to bring back Flap Tucker, I'm ready."

-~ S.J. Rozan, Shamus Award-winning author of Concourse

Too Easy

Flap Tucker Series #2
July 1998

From the neon of Atlanta to the Georgia seacoast, he's searching for a killer, a motive. . . and his past.

On the marshy shores of the Georgia coast, the locals tell a story: of a woman who appeared from the sea, and of two gentle twin brothers who would do anything for her. But now a man is dead, the twins are missing, and only a meditating private eye from Atlanta can unravel the truth. . . .

His name is Flap Tucker. A man with a gift for visualization and the courage to go where his mind leads him, Flap has been hired by the beautiful nightclub owner Dalliance Oglethorpe to go deep into rural Georgia, where a banker has been murdered. The man's wife—a woman so shrouded in mystery that some believe she is a spirit—and a pair of twin brothers named Peachy and Maytag are wanted in the crime.

Entering a world of gnarled kinships, family secrets, and dirty money, Flap stumbles upon yet another murder. And now the Zen private eye is pursuing a story stranger than fiction, a killer closer than he thinks, and some dangerous ghosts of his own.

"This series is clearly one of the most entertaining regional mysteries on the market today."

--Harriet Klausner, BookBrowser

Easy

Flap Tucker Series #1
November 1997

A missing woman. A killer on the loose. And an Atlanta private eye who meditates his way to the truth....

Check out the Majestic Diner At 3 a.m. Look for a man named Flap and a woman named Dalliance...

Flap Tucker isn't like other private eyes. He's a mystic, a finder of lost things, a veteran of a foreign war who lives on the wrong side of town and lets his mind go freely to nirvana. Now, in the city that Sherman burned but didn't bury, where good ol' boys and transvestite hookers pass in the downtown Atlanta night, Flap Tucker is beginning the strangest case of his already strange career.

Flap's best friend, the beautiful nightclub owner Dalliance Oglethorpe, wants Flap to find the vanished wife of a millionaire scion—a half-wit who may have made the woman up in the first place. Real or not, Flap starts looking for one Augusta Donne, and finds, instead, the brutal murders of two topless dancers and a transvestite who was ritually slain. Each step of the way, the case grows more sinister, until Flap suddenly reaches that place only he can go: where all the universe is interconnected, where a Zenlike truth illuminates the path, and where Flap Tucker, the man with all the answers, is standing in a killer's way....

"A promising debut in a series that accomplishes the tricky task of being satisfyingly different. The first person voice of Flap is a good storyteller, funny and witty."

-~ Mystery News

"Easy is populated with wildly appealing characters and an unusually engaging detective."

~ -The Independent Reader -- Review