Easy as One, Two, Three

Flap Tucker #3

by Phillip DePoy

Deep in the hollows of Georgia's wild Appalachians, the ghost of a young girl can sometimes be seen in the moonlight, still wandering the paths of Black Pine Mountain, where she vanished more than fifty years ago. Now another little girl has gone missing, the only child of a troubled backwoods couple guarding a dark secret of their own.

Flap Tucker, a Zen private eye with a knack for finding missing things, is on his way from Atlanta to the eerie little town of Lost Pines. Beautiful nightclub owner Dalliance Oglethorpe has come with him. Together they will play their parts in the most terrifying kind of ghost one that's real--and not over yet.

Following a twisted trail that leads from the down-home warmth of Miss Nina's renowned FOOD establishment to the terrifying raptures of charismatic snake handlers, from shadowy forests where old tragedies lie buried to the cold realities of modern-day evil, Flap Tucker and his special talents are a little girl's last hope against a ghost's final revenge.

Genres: Mystery, Southern

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 30, 1999

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flap Tucker is just a little different. A Zen practitioner who has a reputation for finding things, he is soon on his way, not quite willingly, to the Georgia Backwoods. There he will find himself involved in the disappearance of a young girl, the ghost of another and some mighty strange occurrences and some eccentric Southern characters. All is not as it appears in these hills.

Fast, easy, written in a light hearted manner. n enjoyable series with an enjoyable lead characters.

ARC from Netgalley.

[CL · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would like to first say I like Flap Tucker and the fact that all the books by Phillip Depoy with the character Flap Tucker have the word “EASY” in the title. Flap has once again been recruited by his best friend DaIliance to look into the mystery of the missing little girl in red. Dally’s cousin and his pregnant wife see a little girl standing in the road and swerve to miss her. Then when they try to locate her to make sure she is ok there is no little girl to be found. Dally talks Flap into coming to visit her cousin who has just had a new baby and to look into this mystery of the missing little girl that is a legend. Can they find her and is she real or a ghost? I would like to thank the publisher and Net Galley for a chance to read this ARC.

[NRVOUTDOORSMAN · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fey and unsatisfying

This book is not a 'mystery' in the classic sense. The 'detective' relies on visions and quasi-supernatural semi-ESP to 'solve' things. All in all it takes a lot more 'willing suspension of disbelief' then I'm prepared to give. Worse, it plays on stereotypes of mountain people and urbanites in a very weak effort at humor. I had a hard time finishing it.

[Judy Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along about midnight on a dark road in the North Georgia mountains, Mustard and Sissy Abernathy are on their way to the hospital because Sissy is in labor and that baby just isn't going to wait much longer to be born. Then smack dab in the middle of the road they see the Little Girl of Lost Pines. Well, what do you think about that? It might change your mind to know the little girl died fifty years ago.

Dalliance Oglethorpe has been in Savannah opening her second nightclub. Easy, in Atlanta, has been such a success Dally has branched out with Easy Two. Probably just about the entire time his best friend Dally has been gone Flap Tucker has stayed home and done a whole lot of nothing. Flap doesn't mind doing nothing at all. As a finder of lost things he chooses his cases and if you don't go out, nobody bothers you about working. Naturally when Dally gets back from Savannah she wants Flap to drive her up to North Georgia to see New Baby Girl Abernathy. It doesn't hurt that she has a ghost story to tell him while they are on their way. Flap doesn't believe in ghosts but he sure does want to help find the ten year old girl who disappeared the night Mustard and Sissy were on their way to the hospital.

I absolutely love this series. I've just recently discovered the Flap Tucker novels so I was curious to see if this third book (first published in 1999) would be as good as the first in the series. It is every bit as good. Being a Southerner myself I mostly try to avoid novels written about the South. It's a hard area to get right and a whole lot of authors mess it up. Phillip Depoy does not mess anything up. His Flap Tucker character is superb because of his willingness to look, listen, and then interpret. He finds lost things and people by gathering facts and then performing his "thing" which means going into a trancelike state and interpreting whatever he sees there as it relates to the case he's working. Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha? Yep. I love to read the description of what Flap "sees" and try to figure out which way the story is going to go from there. I was surprised by this one.

I see there are other novels in this series and I can't wait to read them. This isn't supernatural stuff, but it does have a different edge to it. If you want to read something a little bit different while still getting a good mystery novel, try one of these books. I'm so glad I did.

I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley.

[Linda Branham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Flap Tucker mysteries :)
The characters are wonderful!!
I have 2 more to go ... and then there are no more :(
In this novel, Flap and Dally go to a northern Georgia mountain town to visit Dally's cousin who just had a brand new baby girl. Dally has a niece! The father of the new baby is named "Mustard" - it kind of sets the tone for the whole story
When they arrive, Flap and Dally join the search for a little girl who happens to be missing. Flap is a private detective who uses meditation to help him find things and people, he begins questioning the townsfolk and follows the threads of his hunches. He soon finds the town loaded down with a lot of secrets and plenty of individuals with much to account for as he meditates in one last effort to locate the child.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really decent mystery with oodles of interesting characters.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Free download. It was a nice mystery set in Georgia, with interesting characters. Reasonably realistic view of small-town Deep South, with an interesting story.

[Jennifer Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

More exciting!

This one also had a lot of twists & turns to it! I truly never expected what happened in the end! One more installment to go hoping he will publish in this series

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are very interesting settings and great characters in this series! Well contrived mysteries with a good bit of humor and a dollop of paranormal.