[Book 62] Murder on Location by Howard Engel (1982)

The third in the Benny Cooperman series of detective stories finds Benny hired to locate a woman who has gone missing from her spouse.

Billie Mason is beautiful and ambitious, and it seems that she is a bit of amateur thespian who is desperate for a shot at stardom.  Benny tracks her down to the nearby Canadian border town of Niagara Falls, which has been currently invaded by a huge Hollywood production company shooting the film “Ice Bridge”.

And then the bodies start piling up faster than January snow…

Another solid entry in the series.  This entry is perhaps a bit top-heavy with characters and suspects to keep track of.  I think Howard Engel’s efforts at filing the names off the Hollywood notables and personalities in attendance was a  little too successful, as I kept mixing up who exactly everyone is.  I’m also unsure how well Engel pulled off showing the behind the scenes look of shooting a film, but he did a solid job at showing off the sordid and seamy side of the Falls, and the mystery itself is top notch.

Penguin Canada has reprinted this and the rest of the Benny Cooperman series in a narrow paperback format for $13.50 each, and they all have the same visual style to the cover-art as illustrated above.

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[Book 51] The Ransom Game by Howard Engel (1981)

The second of the Benny Cooperman detective stories, featuring Canada’s answer to Philip Marlowe. Cooperman is a nebbishy 40-something fellow, a nice Jewish slob working in the gumshoe trade in Grantham, a fictitious city located somewhere between Hamilton and Niagara Falls.

It’s a cold Canadian February, and nearly everyone he knows has gone to Florida for the winter.  While freezing his tender bits and wondering if he should join them, Cooperman unexpectedly lands a job.  He is hired to track down an ex-con by his girl-friend, who had been living with her as soon as he got out of Kingston in November.  The fellow has gone missing, and could Cooperman track him down?

Benny soon learns that the ex-con was famous for being the ring-leader of an amateur gang responsible for a notorious kidnapping in Grantham nearly a decade ago.  While the victim was recovered safely, the $500,000 paid ransom was never found, and now all the gang is out on parole, with the local cops, OPP and RCMP watching everyone like hawks to see if anybody will lead them to the loot.

While his girl-friend insists he has gone straight, Cooperman wonders, especially as somebody in a dark blue mustang starts immediately to tail him after his first visit to the parole board office for more information…

Highly enjoyable mystery. I’ll be reading the others.

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[Book 42] The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel (1980)

I broke my week long book reading drought with the first in a new mystery series for me.  I started it last night and eagerly finished it this afternoon.

Benny Cooperman is a nebbishy 40 something year old fellow.  He’s single, Jewish, a bit of a slob, has middle aged spread, dislikes beer (it gives him gas) and has an annoying and complaining mother who always compares him to his brother the doctor.

Benny Cooperman is also a private detective who Canadian Howard Engel has crafted to follow in the gumshoes of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer.

In this, the first of a series, Benny Cooperman is hired by a woman to trace her spouse’s whereabouts, as she is convinced his lies are covering up an illicit affair. Benny traces his unexplained absences and finds the man was actually visiting a doctor.  About to close the file after his successful tail job, Benny learns that the man he had followed all afternoon has just unexpectedly killed himself, shooting himself in the head with a target pistol.

But who kills himself 2 hours after just ordering delivery on a brand new 10 speed bicycle?

I liked this mystery story.  It nicely balances the whodunnit school of writing with the psychological school, one where sordid deeds of the past are dug up by villains today to drive the plot humming along. And, in a departure from the tough guy school of detective writing, Benny is no tough guy, preferring to battling with his wits, than his fists.

I liked the setting, too.  The year is 1980-something period (when former CBC producer wrote his book) where you can still smoke in diners and telephone calls from outside phone booths cost just 10 cents, and a very ritzy home goes for 400 Gs.  Cooperman’s beat is Grantham, a fictional city in SW Ontario  (whose location near to Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara Falls looks an awful lot like St. Catherines to me). He has an office is a run-down office building, and he shares the floor with a lush of a Chiropractor named Dr. Bushmill.

I’ll be sure to track down others in this innovative Canadian mystery series (there are 11 books total).

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