Myrna Yates was cool, attractive—a real society lady—and in trouble. Benny Cooperman, a private eye in Grantham, Ontario, Canada with a hard head and a tender heart, was ready to help her in any way he could. Her concern? Whether her husband Chester was having an affair. But when Ches commits suicide the day Benny begins his investigation, our detective realizes he may be dealing with something beyond a simple "family affair." Probing into the curious circumstances surrounding the death, Benny finds himself in the midst of a strange group of people—one that involves a mysterious psychiatrist, eminent but shady citizens, and soon, a few more suicides. Or are they murders?

Benny Cooperman is slowly going crazy. It's February in Grantham, Ontario, Canada, and he has nothing better to do than watch the frost creeping in under his door. And think about his family and friends enjoying the warmer life in Florida. Nothing that is, until blue-eyed, long-legged Muriel Falkirk enters his private investigator's office because her boyfriend, the notorious Johnny Rosa, has gone missing. It's been several years since Johnny pulled off a sensational kidnapping. He had served his time in Kingston Pen and been released. But now he's vanished. Skipped parole? Murdered? Or what? Muriel wants to know where he is. A lot of other people do too, most of them interested in the un-recovered half-million-dollar ransom. Benny takes Muriel's case and joins "The Ransom Game" too. In this witty and intriguing thriller, he discovers that nobody plays by the rules.

The Hollywood elite have gathered at Niagara Falls, Canada in the dead of winter to make an epic thriller, "Ice Bridge." When our favourite Grantham City private eye, Benny Cooperman, wanders onto the set, he isn't looking for a part. He's tracing a woman missing from his nearby hometown and usual beat. Has she been hit with the lust for stardom? Or are her desires something more conventional - and a lot more dangerous? "Howard 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.

Canadian P.I. Benny Cooperman takes to the wilderness in this one - Ontario's beautiful Algonquin Provincial Park. He's staying at Petawawa Lodge. Just the basics mind you but the swimming and fishing are great. Benny is keeping an eye on super-successful evangelist Norbert Patten, head of the Ultimate Church. Patten's hiding out as he waits for an American Supreme Court decision on the validity of his church. He's hoping to dodge some bitter enemies at the same time. Patten's return to the locale of his youth triggers some macabre happenings. When the body of Indigenous guide Aeneas DuFond is discovered in a flooded culvert, Benny takes a closer look at some of the lodge visitors - among others, we have the elderly but commanding Maggie McCord and her nasty, no-good son George; Aeneas' schoolteacher brother Hector; illicit lovebirds Des and Delia, and the gorgeous and mysterious Aline Barbour. Join Benny as he finds danger in the wilderness. He does bump into a bear, but that's far from the worst of it.

When Rabbi Meltzer and the President of Grantham’s synagogue, Mr. Tepperman, knock on Benny’s office door, they weren't looking to sell raffle tickets. Of that much, Benny was sure. It turns out that they need his help as a private investigator in tracking down a missing lawyer who has disappeared with the life savings of half of the city's Jewish community. His new clients promise to pay him $500 for his work, but Benny knows he’ll likely never see a dime of it. What can he do? It’s summer in the city and it's going to be a hot one. With complications and bodies piling up. Welcome to #5 in the acclaimed Benny Cooperman series!

The irrepressible Grantham private detective, or is it private investigator?, Benny Cooperman becomes embroiled with the seamy side of the glittering Canadian art world after an old friend, an investor in the suddenly valuable works of a local painter, is murdered.

His readers stretch now to thirteen countries, from his native Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the US. 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.

Benny Cooperman, the working-stiff private eye, is back, this time trying to sort out the kerfuffle surrounding the plumbing, a dead old woman, and a crooked politician. It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is too preoccupied with the death of his girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, an elderly woman who appears to have starved to death. Lizzy may have died hungry, but she had plenty of money, and somehow former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavoury character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. As Benny gets enmeshed in the case the body count increases alarmingly—but what’s happened with the plumbing? Book 8 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series.

When elegant detective Benny Cooperman is shanghaied from his comfortable bed and introduced to infamous crime boss Abram Wise, who wants Benny to find out who is trying to kill him, Benny is plunged into a world of murder, Middle Eastern food, and fashion, in a complex mystery that combines both past and present.

Benny Cooperman's favourite lunch counter and diner have closed down and the fittings have been sold to Americans. The nation mourns the accidental death of its greatest artist, cellist Dermot Keogh. It's April and there's already a heat wave. Things are just not the way they used to be. Alas, not just the plots and settings have changed in Howard Engel's 10th Benny Cooperman mystery. While Canada's favourite fictional detective is still his smart-alecky but unsophisticated self ("Dim Sum may be unknown in Grantham, Mr. Cooperman, but we in Toronto have had it for nearly forty years"), his talents seem washed out, if not washed up, in this nasty little mystery set in the high-tech, high-pressure world of a Toronto TV station far up the road from his native Grantham. All the stock figures are there: the former high school love goddess who calls at the detective's office wondering if she's in the path of a killer, the small-town lawyer, the slobbish cops, the heavies in dark glasses. What's missing are the gritty small-town ambience and naked class antagonisms that drive best hard-boiled detective fiction, including Engel's early novels. Burdened with the bland homogeneity of the contemporary city and with convoluted literary references, the tale becomes progressively less gripping. In fact Cooperman hasn't been himself since 1990's Dead and Buried, when his creator first fell for the suits and the happy ending. The warning of his first sentence—"I should have seen the writing on the wall"—should have been a message to readers as well. —Robyn Gillam

Recovering in a Toronto hospital from a serious blow to the head, private investigator Benny Cooperman struggles with memory loss and a condition that has rendered him able to write but unable to read, a circumstance that compromises his ability to remember his attacker and the case he was on the brink of solving. Simultaneous.

The setting is a fictional country, Murinam, which has the feel and look of a former French colony. Benny Cooperman, still recovering from the head injury that impaired his short-term memory, is persuaded to investigate the death of an old schoolmate, Jake Grange. Grange, a family man, ran a scuba diving business before he was, it seems, murdered; his widow wants Benny to find out what happened and recover important documents. Benny’s cognitive difficulties have made his own world alien to him, but, ironically, he’s willing to broaden his horizons by travelling to countries where he can’t read the signs. Benny is now a true cosmopolitan—equally out of place everywhere. Intrigue and suspense amid the denizens of Murinam make this a memorable case for Benny Cooperman. Book 12 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series.

Benny Cooperman, the most endearing private eye in literature, is sprung from small-town Grantham and working in Toronto. A dealer in rare books asks him to investigate the theft of an ancient Jewish manuscript. While Benny is immersed in the strange world of antique book collectors, his client turns up dead and the robbery isn't all it seems. A short mystery starring Canada’s great detective.