Murder on Location: Howard Engel

When Howard Engel wrote his first crime fiction novel he set out to have a different kind of private detective as the hero. Benny Cooperman, first featured in The Suicide Murders, is Canadian and Jewish; he is easy going and doesn't carry a gun. Benny works in Grantham, Ontario, a fictional town modeled after St. Catherines, Ontario, which is in Canada's Niagara Region.

This book, Murder on Location (1982), is the third novel in the Benny Cooperman series. The story opens in Niagara Falls on the Canadian side of the river. Benny is searching for a missing person, the wife of a businessman. Billie Mason, the missing wife, may have gone to Niagara Falls hoping to get a bit part in a movie production. While trying to locate Billie, Benny discovers a dead body and his life gets more complicated. He has to determine whether Billie's disappearance is related to her interactions with the Hollywood actors and crews who are filming in Niagara Falls, or if the shady crooks who are associated with her husband are responsible.

The main attraction in these books, from my point of view, is Benny Cooperman and his family and friends. Benny seems to subsist on egg-salad sandwiches and bagels. He has a good relationship with the policemen he encounters. He spends time with his parents and he is just generally a good guy.

I enjoyed this book particularly because the story revolves around the making of a film, and the setting is near Niagara Falls. Benny and several other characters have been involved in amateur theatrical productions, and that is always fun to read about. The story itself gets convoluted and I was continually confused by the multitude of characters. Yet I admired Benny's determined search for Billie, and I did want to know how it all worked out in the end.

I will be continuing this series for two reasons. One is that I have grown to enjoy reading Canadian crime fiction and getting that opportunity to learn more about that country. I am participating in the 8th Annual Canadian Book Challenge which runs from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

I was originally motivated to read this series when I read about an unusual event in Howard Engel's life. In July 2001 he suffered a stroke that resulted in a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia. He could no longer read and his memory was affected. After recovering (to a certain extent), he wrote another mystery featuring Benny Cooperman, titled Memory Book (2005). In that book, Cooperman suffers from the same disorder that Engel has. I wanted to read earlier books in the series before reading Memory Book, but it is taking me a while to get to that goal, so I may have to rethink my strategy.

I reviewed the 2nd book in the series, The Ransom Game, here.

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Publisher:   St. Martin's Press, 1982
Length:      222 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Benny Cooperman, #3
Setting:      Ontario, Niagara Region
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.

The Ransom Game: Howard Engel

Howard Engel set out to create a different type of private detective in his books, per an interview with Bill Gladstone:

"I had read a lot of mystery novels over the years, and I decided I would try to make a character who wasn’t like any of the others," he said. "Where one American detective was fast with his fists, Benny Cooperman was going to avoid confrontation. Where the others were American and Christian, Benny Cooperman was going to be Canadian and Jewish. And where most of the American and British detectives came from large cities like New York, London, San Francisco or Los Angeles, Benny Cooperman was going to come from a small town."

The Ransom Game (1981) is the second book in the series, following The Suicide Murders. Benny is hired to locate a paroled ex-con, by his girlfriend. He is missing and she fears he has come to harm. Her boyfriend, Johnny Rosa, was in prison for kidnapping a wealthy young woman, and the ransom money has never turned up. Obviously, there are lots of people interested in where the money is located. All of them assume that Johnny has it hidden somewhere.

The story takes us through several twists and turns, to both the less savory parts of town and the wealthy family of the girl who was kidnapped.

In most of the books in the series (based on reviews and articles), Benny's family is prominent, especially his parents. In The Ransom Game, they don't figure much in the story. His parents and his brother have all gone to Florida and left Benny in the cold of Grantham, in Canada. This is the third book that I have read recently that mentions that many Canadians go to Florida in the winter. I had no idea. The books were by three different Canadian authors, so it must be true.

A recent blog post by Margot at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist... noted that private eyes are often scraping by, with not much money to live on. This certainly seems to be the case for Benny. He lives in a hotel room, which he describes in the book:

Here the dusty curtains, the pile of books on the chair, the laundry balled up with promises in the cupboard, the faint chemical smell that came from the sheets, even when they had been changed, always got me thinking the things I didn't want to be thinking about.

My take:

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The main character is interesting; I liked a lot of the secondary characters, especially the policemen who help him out with the case. The author kept me guessing as to the solution of the mystery, and some red herrings played out realistically.

My only quibble with these books is that the two I have read so far seem formulaic, and follow a typical plot line of the hard-boiled private eye novels. Private eye is approached by beautiful young woman; private eye takes the case, of course. He falls for some beautiful female involved in the case. This one follows the standard story even though the detective is not so hard-boiled, not macho at all.

About a third of the way in, I forgot all about that, and just enjoyed the story for what it is. I will be trying more of the ten remaining books in this series. I recommend that you give this series a try if you like private eye novels.

I read this book for the Canadian Book Challenge 6. The book is set in a small city in Canada near Niagara Falls: Grantham, Ontario. This town is based on the real city of St. Catharines, Ontario, where the author was born.