Review by Aubrey Hamilton
(December 2022)
CANADIAN AUTHOR Howard Engel (1931-2019) wrote 14 books about Benny Cooperman, an unconventional private investigator in the small Canadian town of Grantham, Ontario (loosely modeled after St. Catharines, Ontario). Nine of them were published between 1980 and 1996 during the late 20th century flood of PI novels. Three more were published in the early 2000s. A novella was published in 2012 and the final book, Over the River, was originally scheduled for release in 2018 by Cormorant Books Canada, but was never published.
Nonetheless, the series was highly regarded: The fourth book Murder Sees the Light won the 1985 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel from the Crime Writers of Canada, and the eighth book There Was an Old Woman was shortlisted for a 1994 Arthur Ellis. In 1998 Engel himself received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the CWC, a special achievement recognition for contributions to the crime fiction field, and he received the Grand Master Award from Crime Writers of Canada in 2014. In 2004, he was given the Matt Cohen Award, an accolade from the Writers’ Trust of Canada that recognizes the entire career of a Canadian writer.
Cooperman’s first appearance was in The Suicide Murders (1980). Myrna Yates comes to his office, convinced her wealthy husband Chester is seeing another woman because he is often not where he says he is. Cooperman agrees to follow him and learns that Chester’s missing time is being spent in a psychiatrist’s office. Soon after a security guard finds Chester dead in his office, an apparent suicide. The police are quick to wrap up their investigation, but Cooperman thinks the death is suspicious and continues to turn over rocks. His misgivings are soon justified.
Scenes move from Cooperman’s sometimes adversarial dealings with local law enforcement to his own investigation that reveals a surprisingly complex motive to his weekly visits with his parents, who want him to take up a more stable career. His sidekick, essential to any fictional PI, is an unexpected and creative character: the alcoholic podiatrist who rents the office across the hall. Cooperman’s wry low-key humor punctuates the narrative. Alongside more traditional private investigators of the era – Elvis Cole, Matt Scudder, Tom Bethany, Amos Walker, for instance – Cooperman is definitely suis generis.
This series will be of particular interest to fans of late 20th century crime fiction as well as to readers of serio-comic mysteries. It may be time for a publisher to reprint the entire catalog.
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ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who still reads at every opportunity and loves to talk about what she is reading. Her Happiness Is a Book is a blog about reading and books, mostly mysteries.
THE BOOK
- The Suicide Murders (1980) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Happiness is a Book
More crime fiction reviews from Aubrey Hamilton. - Thrilling Detective Non-Fiction
Essays, Reviews and Other Stuff
This review originally appeared in Friday’s Forgotten Books on December 2022, and was taken from her site Happiness is a Book. Used with permission.
