Howard Engel Books In Order

Dead And Buried

Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair, known and loved as the witty, egg salad loving, Jewish gentleman sleuth he is the world over. This kinder, gentler detective funny, smart and squeamish about violence is the creation of master of the genre Howard Engel, whose enthusiastic fans include not only Ruth Rendell, but also Donald E. Westlake, Julian Symons and Tony Hillerman. His readers stretch now to thirteen countries, from his native Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and of course the U.S.A. In his latest case, Benny Cooperman is sure that toxic waste isn’t something you should spend too much time thinking about it just isn’t good for your mental health. But when Jack Dowden’s widow appeals to Benny to investigate the death of her truck driving husband, our favorite gumshoe finds himself up to his egg salad stained lapels in the deadly filth of Kinross Disposals. As he unearths clues and PCBs the body count rises, and Benny Cooperman does everything he can not to end up Dead And Buried. Engel has once again created a colorful cast of good guys and rogues, another satisfying chapter in the sleuthing life of Benny Cooperman a mystery guaranteed to challenge novice and seasoned fan alike.

There Was an Old Woman

The latest mystery featuring the wildly popular sleuth Benny Cooperman, ‘One of the most enjoyable private eyes in crime fiction’ The Toronto StarThere Was an Old Woman, another delicious Benny Cooperman mystery, is an election year gem and ‘an audience grabber right from page one’ The Vancouver Sun. It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny’s janitor, Kogan, is preoccupied with the death of his sometime girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, who appears to have starved to death. Benny agrees to attend the inquest if Kogan will look into the plumbing. Lizzy may have died hungry but she had plenty of money, and somehow former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavory character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. Ramsden escapes the inquest with his reputation untarnished, while Benny finds himself hopelessly enmeshed in the posthumous troubles of Kogan’s late love. By the end of this twisting, turning tale, the body count has increased alarmingly. But has the toilet been fixed? Only Benny and his loyal readers now for sure.’There Was an Old Woman has all Engel’s trademarks the quick one liners, the elaborate plot, the engaging characters…
. Welcome back, Benny.’ Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail’Mr. Engel is a born writer, a natural stylist…
. This is a writer who can bring a character to life in a few lines.’ Ruth Rendell

Getting Away With Murder

‘The Cooperman novels are heavy on full bodied characters, sharp dialogue and rich humor. Benny just plain charms the socks off anyone he meets.’ Booklist Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair a witty, egg salad loving, gentlemanly Jewish detective with a pronounced squeamishness when things get violent. In his most baffling case yet, Benny Cooperman is snug in his bed in quiet Grantham, a town near Niagara Falls, when three unsavory thugs drag him out of bed and present him like a trophy to notorious crime boss, Abram Wise. Someone has made two attempts on the gangster’s life and with no else to turn to he wants Benny to investigate. Howard Engel has once again assembled a colorful cast that includes Wise’s two disgruntled ex wives, an alluring supermodel, an irate foreign car dealer, and an eccentric retired librarian. In an intricately woven plot that mixes past and present, murder and Middle Eastern food, fashion and auto repair, Cooperman finds himself entangled in more corruption, vengeance and intrigue than one ever imagined could exist in a sleepy little town.

The Cooperman Variations

Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair, known and loved the world over as a witty, egg salad loving, Jewish gentleman sleuth. This kinder, gentler detective funny, smart, and squeamish about violence is the creation of master of the genre Howard Engel, and readers stretch now to thirteen countries, from his native Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the US.

Memory Book

Left for dead in a dumpster, private investigator Benny Cooperman becomes his own client in his most puzzling mystery yet.

Benny is recovering in a Toronto hospital from a serious blow to the head. He has a condition called alexia sine agraphia; in layman’s terms, it means he can still write but cannot read. And his memory has been affected too: Although he can quote lines from his high school production of Twelfth Night, he finds himself brushing his teeth with his shaving cream. Even his girlfriend s name Anna Abraham continues to elude him.

When Benny learns that he was found unconscious beside a dead woman, he figures he must have been close to solving a case. With Anna working as field agent and two Toronto cops reluctantly sharing their discoveries, Benny pieces together the events that led to a murder and his own injuries.

Murder in Montparnasse

It’s autumn 1925, and a killer uncannily like England’s Jack the Ripper is stalking the city streets of Paris and preying on young women. Michael Ward is a journalist newly arrived to the Left Bank. When he falls in with Jason Waddington, an expatriate American writer who introduces him to the cafe scene and his crowd of writers and artists, Ward soon discovers that Jack de Paris is not the only trouble afoot in the City of Light. Rumor has it that Waddington has written a damaging roman a clef about his friends, and tempers are rising even as fear of the killer grips the city. When the body of Laure Duclos is found, it seems their circle has finally been touched by Jack. But Ward has his doubts and begins to wonder whether Laure was truly Jack de Paris’s latest victim, or if someone else was using the serial killer as a convenient cover to protect themselves. In a feat of literature reminiscent of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, Howard Engel blends intriguing historical fact with nail biting fiction to produce a thriller of the highest order. Murder in Montparnasse will delight both new readers of Engel and his long time fans.

Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell

A dead opera star, a brilliant anatomy professor with Sherlockian powers of deduction and a moody Victorian backdrop it all adds up to a thrillingly entertaining historical mystery. Howard Engel is the award winning writer whose Benny Cooperman mysteries garner rave international reviews fans stretch to thirteen countries from Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the U.S. His latest, Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell, is a brilliant departure from the Cooperman series, set in the Edinburgh of late 1800s and peopled with such illustrious historical figures as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Benjamin Disraeli. Julian Symons called Engel’s first non series mystery Murder in Montparnasse first class entertainment, stylishly written…
Engel can turn a phrase as neatly as Chandler.’ The year is 1879 and Alan Lambert has been tried, convicted and sentenced to hang for the murder of a dazzling opera star and her lover. But Lambert’s brother believes in his innocence and pleads with Dr. Bell, a celebrated professor of anatomy, to uncover the truth. Dr. Bell agrees and sets out to crack the case, with his keen powers of deduction and the help of his young student, Arthur Conan Doyle. The exuberant plot of Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell carries readers across the roof tops of Edinburgh and descends into the thickets of municipal corruption. Fans of Sherlock Holmes will immediately recognize Holmes in Dr. Joseph Bell, who in real life was Conan Doyle’s model for his famous sleuth.

Crimes of Passion

For the second time, celebrated crime fiction writer Howard Engel turns his hand to non fiction. This time he leads us on a riveting and spectacular journey through the murky passages of criminal law to the places where love and murder intersect. Setting out in the nineteenth century, Engel travels from France and England to Canada and the United States, with engaging detours along the way. As he discovers, le crime passionnel, a concept originating in France, has a special place in many legal codes around the world. Someone who has suddenly or unexpectedly been betrayed by a loved and trusted partner, even in an illicit relationship, is rarely treated as a common murder. In Crimes of Passion, Engel explores more than twenty five classic, infamous and still unresolved cases. With the elegant flair and penetrating insight of a novelist, he brings the victims and perpetrators to life in remarkable detail. Ruth Ellis the last woman hanged in England, OJ Simpson the football star, Juliet Hulme the writer Anne Perry, Jean Liger ‘the hungry lover’ and Jean Harris the headmistress are just a few of the intriguing characters you’ll meet along the way. The result is a wonderfully eclectic investigation complemented by more than forty illustrations and photographs into the strange, tragic, world of passion and murder. Love, lovers, loss, and lingering malice combine in this emotional volume, sure to thrill any crime fan or historian. Praise for Howard Engel and his earlier book Lord High Executioner ‘…
a born writer, a natural stylist…
a writer who can bring a character to life in a few lines.’ Ruth Rendell ‘…
morbidly fascinating and strangely lively…
‘ The Washington Post ‘Engel writes compassionately and well, with a novelist’s eye for detail.’ The Spectator U.K.

Man Who Forgot How To Read

The remarkable journey of an award winning writer struck with a rare and devastating affliction that prevented him from reading even his own writing
One hot midsummer morning, novelist Howard Engel picked up his newspaper from his front step and discovered he could no longer read it. The letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves into something that looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next. While he slept, Engel had experienced a stroke and now suffered from a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia, meaning that while he could still write, he could no longer read.
Over the next several weeks in hospital and in rehabilitation, Engel discovered that much more was affected than his ability to read. His memory failed him, and even the names of old friends escaped his tongue. At first geography eluded him: he would know that two streets met somewhere in the city, but he couldn t imagine where. Apples and grapefruit now looked the same. When he returned home, he had trouble remembering where things went and would routinely ?nd cans of tuna in the dishwasher and jars of pencils in the freezer.
Despite his disabilities, Engel prepared to face his dilemma. He contacted renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks for advice and visited him in New York City, forging a lasting friendship. He bravely learned to read again. And in the face of tremendous obstacles, he triumphed in writing a new novel.
An absorbing and uplifting story, filled with sly wit and candid insights, The Man Who Forgot How To Read will appeal to anyone fascinated by the mysteries of the mind, on and off the page.

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