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Flap Tucker #1
Easy
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 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....
Phillip DePoy has published short fiction, poetry, and criticism in Story, The Southern Poetry Review, Xanadu, Yankee, and other magazines. He is currently the creative director of the Maurice Townsend Center for the Performing Arts at the State University of West Georgia, and has had many productions of his plays at regional theaters throughout the south. He is the recipient of numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the state of Georgia, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Arts Festival of Atlanta, the South Carolina Council for the Arts, etc. He composed the scores for the regional Angels in America and other productions and has played in a numerous jazz and folk bands. In his work as a folklorist he has collected songs and stories throughout Georgia and has worked with John Burrison, the foremost folklorist in the south and with Joseph Cambell. Nexus Press published his nonfiction essay and photo collection, Messages from Beyond. Easy is his first novel.
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 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....
Phillip DePoy has published short fiction, poetry, and criticism in Story, The Southern Poetry Review, Xanadu, Yankee, and other magazines. He is currently the creative director of the Maurice Townsend Center for the Performing Arts at the State University of West Georgia, and has had many productions of his plays at regional theaters throughout the south. He is the recipient of numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the state of Georgia, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Arts Festival of Atlanta, the South Carolina Council for the Arts, etc. He composed the scores for the regional Angels in America and other productions and has played in a numerous jazz and folk bands. In his work as a folklorist he has collected songs and stories throughout Georgia and has worked with John Burrison, the foremost folklorist in the south and with Joseph Cambell. Nexus Press published his nonfiction essay and photo collection, Messages from Beyond. Easy is his first novel.
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
57 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
Phillip DePoy
36 books84 followersPhillip DePoy has published short fiction, poetry, and criticism in Story, The Southern Poetry Review, Xanadu, Yankee, and other magazines. He is currently the creative director of the Maurice Townsend Center for the Performing Arts at the State University of West Georgia, and has had many productions of his plays at regional theaters throughout the south. He is the recipient of numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the state of Georgia, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Arts Festival of Atlanta, the South Carolina Council for the Arts, etc. He composed the scores for the regional Angels in America and other productions and has played in a numerous jazz and folk bands. In his work as a folklorist he has collected songs and stories throughout Georgia and has worked with John Burrison, the foremost folklorist in the south and with Joseph Cambell.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 9, 2015
The writing it fast paced just as the character speaks and you can almost hear his voice as you try and keep up with what is happening. Flap Tucker s a mystic and he and Dalliance Oglethorpe have been friends since they were children so they know all of each other’s secrets and would do anything for each other. Now Dalliance gets Flap involved in a triple murder that may be occult driven while trying to find the wife who may be made up by an idiot. Great read. I would like to thank the publisher and Net Galley for the chance to read this ARC.
February 13, 2020
PROTAGONIST: Flap Tucker, private eye
SETTING: Atlanta
SERIES: #1
RATING: 3.25
WHY: Flap Tucker is an unusual private eye who has a kind of mystical intuition that allows him to find lost things and people. His best friend, Dalliance (Dally) knows of a millionaire who is desperately trying to find his missing wife. Flap takes on the case. She also gets him involved in 2 other situations—the death of a drag queen who is found lying inside a pentagram drawn in the dirt in his yard and the murder of 2 girls found in a car trunk. The plot is very complicated. It’s like walking into a spider web and struggling to find your way out. But never fear—the perpetrator will tell you everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING—about what he did, why he did it, how he made fools of everyone, what he had for breakfast and you will know all. The characters were likeable. I enjoyed the fact that Flap didn’t have much ambition and took on all these cases only to please his friend and not in a quest for money, even though he hadn’t worked for 18 months. Despite its flaws, the book showed enough promise for me try the second.
SETTING: Atlanta
SERIES: #1
RATING: 3.25
WHY: Flap Tucker is an unusual private eye who has a kind of mystical intuition that allows him to find lost things and people. His best friend, Dalliance (Dally) knows of a millionaire who is desperately trying to find his missing wife. Flap takes on the case. She also gets him involved in 2 other situations—the death of a drag queen who is found lying inside a pentagram drawn in the dirt in his yard and the murder of 2 girls found in a car trunk. The plot is very complicated. It’s like walking into a spider web and struggling to find your way out. But never fear—the perpetrator will tell you everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING—about what he did, why he did it, how he made fools of everyone, what he had for breakfast and you will know all. The characters were likeable. I enjoyed the fact that Flap didn’t have much ambition and took on all these cases only to please his friend and not in a quest for money, even though he hadn’t worked for 18 months. Despite its flaws, the book showed enough promise for me try the second.
July 16, 2021
This is an older title (1997 pub date) so some of the technology is out-of-date. However, the author tells a great twisty, turny mystery that of course I didn't figure out. When I got to the end I was shocked to find out who the 'bad guy' really was!
The characters are quicky and interesting. I'm definitely going to read the next one too.
This would be a great beach read for anyone who likes mysteries.
The characters are quicky and interesting. I'm definitely going to read the next one too.
This would be a great beach read for anyone who likes mysteries.
October 4, 2022
Grant you, this book is old, but it's also good and done so well. It was straight to the point and in your face with southern courtesy. At the beginning, I thought what the hell is the hick mess I picked up, yet again without reading the summary(it was for a challenge on low rated books), but so glad I did.
January 21, 2018
Hated it
Hated this book
Love his Fever Devil novels
One two three four five six seven
My apologies to the author
Hated this book
Love his Fever Devil novels
One two three four five six seven
My apologies to the author
May 14, 2025
a beautiful mystic story
Such a surprise on so many levels with education included with the price of the book.
This is a really fun story.
Such a surprise on so many levels with education included with the price of the book.
This is a really fun story.
January 22, 2025
This is not fated to be a classic.
The writing is suspect, and relatively uninteresting.
The author is trying hard and I applaud him for trying.
I will not be reading more.
The writing is suspect, and relatively uninteresting.
The author is trying hard and I applaud him for trying.
I will not be reading more.
November 18, 2015
What a wonderfully different variation on the standard PI mystery novel this was. Flap Tucker is so unusual it took me a while to finally pin down his personality. Under normal conditions that might be a bad thing in a mystery novel, here it simply added to the atmosphere created by author Phillip Depoy.
This novel was originally published in 1997 so I'm hoping that seeing it republished means there might be other books featuring Flap and his best buddy, Dalliance Oglethorpe. Dally runs a club that used to be an Easy Lube until Flap tore down the Lube portion of the sign. Now it's a nightclub that seems to stay open all hours and where everybody pretty much knows who and what you are. Listen to the live band and catch up with your buddies, doesn't matter because it's all Atlanta good. Now Flap, he's known to be a man who can find things. Turns out the things he finds most seem to be missing people. It's a gift he has. When Dally tries to lure him out of eighteen months of the doldrums because of his divorce she uses one of Flap's favorite people to do it with - we're talking about Lenny, know to everybody as Looney Lenny. Now all the patrons of Easy know Lenny isn't married but it seems Lenny thinks he is and he wants Flap to find his wife-gone-missing. What, you might ask, could this possibly have to do with the Communist Chinese and the Dalai Lama? Good that you should ask because all your answers will come from reading the book.
This novel had me wondering over and over exactly where it was headed. This "gift" Flap has seemed like it was going to be paranormal, but it finally veered away from that and became something else. So if you don't like to have fantasy or paranormal mixed into your detective novels you can rest easy on that score. On the other hand, if you enjoy writing that strays pretty far from the average plot lines, Mr. Depoy has given you something unique to read. There are lots of interesting coincidences which turn out not to be coincidences at all if you look at the world from the Taoist viewpoint and the good guy and the villain in this piece both are very concerned with those viewpoints. Each character is an absolute gem both from the standpoint of their development within the novel and the way in which each is used by the author to move the story forward. ( I'm still wondering if Kay really did go back home and she could easily be considered a minor character.) How can you not have a ball when you combine strippers, drag queens, Tibetan immigrants, patients and staff from a mental hospital, a club bouncer who prefers perennials over annuals, and a guy who is visited by an angel when he sees the golden curtain?
I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley.
This novel was originally published in 1997 so I'm hoping that seeing it republished means there might be other books featuring Flap and his best buddy, Dalliance Oglethorpe. Dally runs a club that used to be an Easy Lube until Flap tore down the Lube portion of the sign. Now it's a nightclub that seems to stay open all hours and where everybody pretty much knows who and what you are. Listen to the live band and catch up with your buddies, doesn't matter because it's all Atlanta good. Now Flap, he's known to be a man who can find things. Turns out the things he finds most seem to be missing people. It's a gift he has. When Dally tries to lure him out of eighteen months of the doldrums because of his divorce she uses one of Flap's favorite people to do it with - we're talking about Lenny, know to everybody as Looney Lenny. Now all the patrons of Easy know Lenny isn't married but it seems Lenny thinks he is and he wants Flap to find his wife-gone-missing. What, you might ask, could this possibly have to do with the Communist Chinese and the Dalai Lama? Good that you should ask because all your answers will come from reading the book.
This novel had me wondering over and over exactly where it was headed. This "gift" Flap has seemed like it was going to be paranormal, but it finally veered away from that and became something else. So if you don't like to have fantasy or paranormal mixed into your detective novels you can rest easy on that score. On the other hand, if you enjoy writing that strays pretty far from the average plot lines, Mr. Depoy has given you something unique to read. There are lots of interesting coincidences which turn out not to be coincidences at all if you look at the world from the Taoist viewpoint and the good guy and the villain in this piece both are very concerned with those viewpoints. Each character is an absolute gem both from the standpoint of their development within the novel and the way in which each is used by the author to move the story forward. ( I'm still wondering if Kay really did go back home and she could easily be considered a minor character.) How can you not have a ball when you combine strippers, drag queens, Tibetan immigrants, patients and staff from a mental hospital, a club bouncer who prefers perennials over annuals, and a guy who is visited by an angel when he sees the golden curtain?
I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley.
March 16, 2012
I think I need a new "shelf" for this one - lol
The main character is Flap Tucker - kind of a private eye - but calls himself a "finder of things"
Flap studies many spiritual and mystical beliefs and therefore the many bizarre coincidences and connections are the underlying theme of the story - they are karma, the path of The Tao. Depoy explains all of these things with wink & a nudge and makes it all believable.
In this, Depoys first novel, Flap is looking for the wife of one of Atlanta's rich - Loony Lenny. It seems that Loony Lenny is a bit "simple" and there is a possibility that he does not really have a wife, but is only imagining her. This occurs at the same time as two "necked" dancers are found dead in tn the trunk of a Blue Buick.
Flap is also asked to uncover the truth behind the "devil man" or demon who is terrorizing the proprietor of a local Asian restaurant. Are all of these events related? Of course! How? Read the book.
Also memorable are Flap's ex-wife - not to mention how they got together in the first place. And his good and life-ling friend, Dally - who owns a bar called "Easy"
And I even forgot to mention that it opens as a drag queen has been found murdered her body found as if it had been struggling to get into a pentagram.
I liked it so much, I ordered the rest of the series :)
The main character is Flap Tucker - kind of a private eye - but calls himself a "finder of things"
Flap studies many spiritual and mystical beliefs and therefore the many bizarre coincidences and connections are the underlying theme of the story - they are karma, the path of The Tao. Depoy explains all of these things with wink & a nudge and makes it all believable.
In this, Depoys first novel, Flap is looking for the wife of one of Atlanta's rich - Loony Lenny. It seems that Loony Lenny is a bit "simple" and there is a possibility that he does not really have a wife, but is only imagining her. This occurs at the same time as two "necked" dancers are found dead in tn the trunk of a Blue Buick.
Flap is also asked to uncover the truth behind the "devil man" or demon who is terrorizing the proprietor of a local Asian restaurant. Are all of these events related? Of course! How? Read the book.
Also memorable are Flap's ex-wife - not to mention how they got together in the first place. And his good and life-ling friend, Dally - who owns a bar called "Easy"
And I even forgot to mention that it opens as a drag queen has been found murdered her body found as if it had been struggling to get into a pentagram.
I liked it so much, I ordered the rest of the series :)
February 13, 2022
This was a very unique detective series featuring Flap Tucker, a truly original character who used the power of focused meditation to disover clues to solve crimes. The books were filled with colorful characters from the South, where author Phillip DePoy is from. Although DePoy went on to develop other series, this one was hands down my favorite. A link on his Amazon webpage led me to another obscure but brilliant series, The Tom Sullivan Mysteries, but my fear is this series may also have come to an end... Both writers failed to find their audiences and so, my guess is, their publishers steered them into other books. Although there will be no more "Easy" books, this series deserves to be discovered by readers who are looking for original voices with fast-paced stories and clever dialogue. Search for it, you'll be glad you did!
November 22, 2015
I loved this book!
This is about a private investigator Flap Tucker and his friend Dalliance Oglethorp (great names!), based in Atlanta, who get involved in an investigation involving a "dead drag queen in a pentogram, topless dancers stuffed in a trunk, a pretty blue Buick...........
So begins a trawl for clues and answers to some of the strange goings on in the city.
The style of writing is reminiscent of 50's "Noir" stories.
There are more "Easy " stories by Phillip DePoy to be read and I shall be looking for more!
A great read!
I received a copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
This is about a private investigator Flap Tucker and his friend Dalliance Oglethorp (great names!), based in Atlanta, who get involved in an investigation involving a "dead drag queen in a pentogram, topless dancers stuffed in a trunk, a pretty blue Buick...........
So begins a trawl for clues and answers to some of the strange goings on in the city.
The style of writing is reminiscent of 50's "Noir" stories.
There are more "Easy " stories by Phillip DePoy to be read and I shall be looking for more!
A great read!
I received a copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
March 9, 2013
Interesting; quirky. Wasn't sure where it was going at first, but it wound up being a detective yarn. The PI, Flap Tucker, has an uncanny ability to find missing people by going into something akin to a trance state to see all the clues come together. There were some interesting twists as the plot progressed and 3 separate happenings coalesce into one criminal wreaking havoc. I would listen to the next book in the series; the reader, Rusty Nelson, did a superb job with the various voices and a casual southern accent.
November 11, 2015
While I love Phillip DePoy, I can't get behind his earlier character "Easy." This book, the style it was written, the poor conversion to E-book, and the characters themselves, put me off this book. I could not finish it. Still love DePoy though!!
April 11, 2016
I really enjoy the characters. The noir quality of the writing and the verbiage is intriguing. Flap is an existential PI
In Atlanta. The novel has a very fluid timeline and good characters. The books are short. They seem more like what used to be called adventures.
In Atlanta. The novel has a very fluid timeline and good characters. The books are short. They seem more like what used to be called adventures.
October 24, 2008
I've enjoyed Phillip DePoy's other series so I read the first of the Flap Tucker and quite enjoyed it, as well.
October 18, 2008
Entertaing and very well told this is an enjoyable read. There were to many dots to connect for me to call it a great mystery, but it's fun with quirkly charaters to keep you smiling.
October 30, 2010
Recommend this mystery, different but worth while.
May 23, 2016
Very good read, or listen. It was fast paced, but I was able to follow it fairly well. I look forward to reading more in the series.
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October 28, 2010By an Atlantan from Cascade. Set in Atlanta with identifiable locations. Enjoyable easy reading.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews