Mystery Author Wins Canadian Honor

Howard Engel, author of the much-praised Benny Cooperman mysteries, has been named to the Order of Canada.

According to CBC Arts, Engel is “among the 55 new members to the order, which was established in 1967 to honour Canadians whose extraordinary achievements or outstanding service in various fields have made a difference across the country.”

Engel, who lives in Toronto, was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1931. He began the Benny Cooperman series in 1980 with The Suicide Murders. There have been 11 Cooperman novels since, including 2005’s Memory Book, written after Engel had suffered a stroke that left him with a condition that makes dealing with the written word very difficult. According to Wikipedia, in Memory Book Benny Cooperman “suffers a blow to the head and is similarly affected ...”

The Thrilling Detective Web Site, not always known for affection, nonetheless offers an affectionate look at Engel’s creation:

Canada may be under-represented in the private eye field, but we do have Howard Engel’s BENNY COOPERMAN. Walking down the not-so-very-mean streets of sleepy Grantham, Ontario (actually St. Catharines), Benny’s a mild-mannered kinda guy, pretty softboiled, just a nice Jewish boy, content with a good book to read, and a chopped egg sandwich now and then at Diana Sweets. But he’s no dummy. He’s also a shrewd, crafty and tenacious investigator. He doesn’t carry a gun, or even fight very well, but he knows how to hang in there, something someone Jewish in a small, Protestant town in southern Ontario probably has a lot of experience with.

The Toronto Star adds:

He is a founder of the Crime Writers of Canada. Before he began his career as a mystery writer, he was a writer and reporter for the CBC, working out of Paris, London, Spain and Cyprus. But it was his books about a Jewish private investigator that turned him into a Canadian icon of the mystery genre.

Engel has also written two standalone historical mysteries, Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell (1997) and Murder in Montparnasse (1999), and a pair of non-fiction works, Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen and Their Kind (1996) and Crimes of Passion: An Unblinking Look at Murderous Love (2001).