DePoy, Phillip [Foggy Moskowitz, #1], (Cold Florida) [hc, Severn House, 2016] 978-0727885753 [pb, Severn House, 2016] 978-1847516831 [It’s 1974. Foggy Moskowitz, a Jewish car thief on the run from the Brooklyn authorities, ends up in Florida working for the first office of Child Protective Service. For personal reasons. An unlikely, but tenacious, child protection officer, he takes on an investigation to find a missing infant, taken from the hospital by her addict mother. But the case takes several unexpected turns as Foggy makes his way from seedy Fry’s Bay to Indian Seminole swampland, undertaking a vision quest, a rite of passage in some Native American cultures, in the process. Along the way he encounters more than a few interesting characters, including John Horse, an Indian mystic, and works to foil a vast land-grab scam by an uber-rich felon. – Amazon]
United States · Fiction author
Phillip DePoy
Phillip DePoy (born 1950, Rockford, Illinois, raised and resides in Atlanta, GA). Best-known for his 5-volume Foggy Moskowitz mystery series. Foggy is the former car-thief son of a famed hitman in the Jewish mob. His Jewish identity is a central part of his “hard-boiled” persona, often contrasted with the settings he finds himself in, such as 1970s Florida or Manhattan. The books often feature other characters from his past within the Jewish community, such as his boyhood friend “Sammy Two Shoes”. Foggy is defined by a blend of cultural identity, linguistic style, and moral framework that marks him as a “Yankee Jew” in the 1970s American South. He frequently references his upbringing in a Jewish neighbourhood in Brooklyn, where he developed a distinct New York accent and a “funny” way of speaking that uses complex vocabulary as a defensive tool. Foggy operates on a pragmatically Jewish, often fatalistic, philosophy focused on “what is” rather than what “should be,” viewing reality as the only thing that truly exists. His transition from a criminal to an officer for Child Protective Services is driven by a desire to “make up for what he’d done wrong,” reflecting a deeply internalized, secularized Jewish sense of moral accounting. His Jewishness is often a point of conversation and occasional friction in his Florida setting, where characters sometimes make assumptions based on his name and accent. - Google/AI]
DePoy, Phillip [Foggy Moskowitz, #2], (Three Shot Burst) [hc, Severn House, 2017] [pb, Severn House, 2018] 978-1847517661 [Foggy Moscowitz is called to Mary’s Shallow Grave, everyone’s favorite bar. A man has been killed – shot three times – by a young girl. With no parents, no fixed abode, and no services to help her, Foggy is forced to shelter her in his beachside apartment. The victim was the son of the richest Seminole in Florida, Ironstone Waters, who sends several of his men, including Mister Redhawk, to collect the girl and find out what happened. With Ironstone’s men, a Colombian drug cartel, and the police all in pursuit, Foggy has nowhere to turn but to John Horse. With some help from the Seminole mystic, Foggy realizes some disturbing truths. – Amazon]
DePoy, Phillip [Foggy Moskowitz, #3], (Icepick) [hc, Severn House, 2018] 978-0727887955 [pb, Severn House, 2019] 978-184751923 [Foggy Moscowitz is shocked when ID found on a body in the bay suggests it’s his close Brooklyn friend, Pan Pan Washington, and the car involved belongs to one of their old associates, Sammy ‘Icepick’ Franks. What message is Icepick trying to send Foggy, and why? The children who found the body were looking for their mother – one of twenty-seven women missing from John Horse’s Seminole tribe, and Foggy immediately takes the pair under his wing as they follow a disturbing trail. Is John right about there being a connection between the car in the bay and the missing women? Could Foggy’s old associates in New York be involved? Hit men, crooked police officers, and even oil-rich Oklahomans can’t stop Foggy on his mission to uncover the truth. – Amazon]
DePoy, Phillip [Foggy Moskowitz, #4], (Sidewalk Saint) [hc, Severn House, 2019] 978-0727889577 [pb, Severn House, 2021] 978-1780296364 [Florida, 1976. Foggy Moscowitz knows he’s having a bad night when he wakes to find a gun pressed to his face. Nelson Roan has busted out of his prison cell and broken into Foggy’s house, demanding Foggy finds his eleven-year-old daughter, Etta. But as Foggy searches for Etta, it seems her father is not the only person who wants her found: Canadian mobsters, crazy New York Irishmen, the FBI and even the Seminole elite are all on her trail. But why? Etta has a special gift – and she knows something that certain people would go to any lengths to make sure stays buried in her memory. As Foggy helps Etta to reveal what she knows, he uncovers a sinister plot with tentacles that stretch further and higher than he could ever have imagined . . – Amazon]
DePoy, Phillip [Foggy Moskowitz, #5], (Sammy Two Shoes) [hc, Severn House, 2021] 978-0727850669 [1976. Foggy Moscowitz has decided to pay his hometown of New York a visit and soon bumps into his old friend, Sammy ‘Two Shoes’ Cohen. Sammy wants a favor – Emory Brewster, an actor in an all-female production of Hamlet, is sending threatening notes to Sammy’s girlfriend and the play’s stage manager, Phoebe Peabody, and Sammy asks Foggy to speak to her. But before he has a chance, Emory is brutally murdered backstage and Phoebe is arrested. The other actors all despised Emory, but as Foggy strives to prove Phoebe’s innocence, Sammy stuns him with an astonishing revelation. Is he telling the truth, or is there more to the story? Foggy is reluctantly pulled back into New York’s criminal underworld as he uncovers more about Emory Brewster. Can he stay alive long enough to catch her killer? – Amazon]
Phillip DePoy continues to weave Jewish elements and characters into his work, including the Old Juniper Bookshop mystery series (written under the pseudonym P.J. Nelson). The use of the pen name P.J. Nelson—created from DePoy’s initials and his wife’s middle name—marks his transition into this “Dixie cozy” subgenre. While the series shifts away from the gritty, urban Jewish noir of Foggy Moskowitz, it maintains a connection to Jewish culture through its protagonist, Madeline “Maddy” Brimley, a Jewish woman and former actress who returns to her small hometown of Enigma, Georgia, to run her late grandmother’s bookstore. She is portrayed as a “cynical native-turned-outsider” whose Jewish identity often contrasts with the predominantly Southern Christian atmosphere of her small town. The stories often feature interactions between Maddy and her close friend, Gloria Coleman, who is an Episcopal priest.
Nelson, P.J. [Phillip DePoy], (Booked for Murder [hc, Minotaur Books, 2024] 978-1250909954 [pb, Minotaur Books, 2025] 978-1250909954 [Madeline Brimley left small town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she’s left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstop, and restart her life, Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges. The gazebo in the back yard is set ablaze and a late night caller threatens to burn the whole store down if she doesn’t leave immediately.
But Madeline Brimley, not one to be intimidated, ignores the threats and soldiers on. Until there’s another fire and a murder in the store itself. Now with a cloud of suspicion falling over her, it’s up to Madeline to untangle the skein of secrets and find the killer before she herself is the next victim. – Amazon]
Nelson, P.J. [Phillip DePoy], (All My Bones [hc, Minotaur, 2025] 978-1250909978 [pb, Minotaur, 2026] 978-1250456366 [Settling in, Madeline recruits her friend Gloria Coleman, the local Episcopal priest, to help her plant azaleas in the front yard of the old Victorian that houses the bookstore. Turning the soil, however, uncovers the body of one Beatrice Glassie, a troublesome woman who has been missing for the past six months. When her friend Gloria is arrested for the murder, Madeline is determined to prove her innocence and, as she quickly finds out, there aren’t many people in town who hadn’t wanted to kill Bea Glassie at one point or another. And the very expensive and rare first edition of a particular volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales―ordered by the victim and her sister is somehow tied to the grim death. With the help of her not-quite-boyfriend, a local lawman, and her deceased aunt’s best friend, Madeline plans to set a trap to catch the real murderer―before she becomes the next victim. – Amazon]