Howard Engel

Howard Engel (2 April 1931 – 18 October 2019) was a Canadian mystery novelist and broadcaster who created Benny Cooperman, one of the most distinctive and beloved detective characters in Canadian fiction. Cooperman — a Jewish private investigator in the fictional Ontario city of Grantham (transparently based on St. Catharines, in the Niagara Peninsula) — appeared in twelve novels from The Suicide Murders (1980) to The Cooperman Variations (2001), offering a uniquely Canadian take on the hard-boiled detective tradition. Engel also became internationally known for an extraordinary personal story: after a stroke in 2001 left him with alexia (the inability to read), he continued writing novels, teaching himself to compose by other means.

Life

Engel was born in Toronto and grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario — the city that would become the model for Grantham. He was educated at McMaster University and later studied in London, England. He worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for many years, producing literary and cultural programmes, before turning to fiction in his late forties.

His marriage to the novelist Marian Engel (author of Bear) ended in divorce but connected him to the centre of Canadian literary life. He was a genial, self-deprecating man whose public persona matched the warmth and humour of his fiction.

The Benny Cooperman Series

Benny Cooperman is a private detective who operates from a modest office above a store on St. Andrew Street in Grantham. He is Jewish in a gentile city, educated but unpretentious, fond of chopped-egg sandwiches, and persistently underestimated by the police, the criminal classes, and his own mother. The series is distinguished by its gentle humour, its precise rendering of small-city Ontario life, and its affectionate but unsentimental portrait of a Jewish community in the Canadian diaspora.

The Suicide Murders (1980), the first novel, establishes Cooperman’s voice and milieu with an assurance that belies its status as a debut. The Ransom Game (1981) involves a kidnapping among Niagara’s wealthy classes. Murder on Location (1982) takes place during a film shoot in the region. Murder Sees the Light (1984) is set at a fishing lodge in northern Ontario — one of the finest “country house” mysteries in Canadian fiction. A City Called July (1986) moves Cooperman temporarily to a fictional Western Canadian city. A Victim Must Be Found (1988) involves antisemitism in Grantham’s past.

The series is sometimes compared to Stuart Kaminsky’s Toby Peters novels or to Kinky Friedman’s mysteries, but its tone is distinctly Canadian — quieter, more self-deprecating, and more interested in community than in individual heroism.

The Alexia

On 31 January 2001, Engel suffered a stroke that left him with alexia — the ability to write but not to read. He could compose sentences but could not recognise written words, even his own handwriting. Oliver Sacks documented Engel’s condition in a 2010 New Yorker article (“A Man of Letters”), and Engel himself wrote about it in The Man Who Forgot How to Read (2007), a memoir that is both a clinical account of his condition and a meditation on what reading means.

Remarkably, he continued writing fiction after the stroke, producing Memory Book (2005) — a Cooperman novel in which Benny himself suffers a brain injury — and East of Suez (2008). The late novels were composed using workarounds: dictation, large-print writing, and his wife Janet Hamilton’s assistance with revision.

Critical Standing

Engel is recognised as one of the founders of Canadian crime fiction — along with Maureen Jennings, Peter Robinson, and Giles Blunt. The Benny Cooperman series occupies a distinctive niche: it is the only major Canadian detective series with a Jewish protagonist, and its rendering of small-city Ontario life is unmatched in the genre.

The series was adapted for Canadian television, with Saul Rubinek as Cooperman. Engel received the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel (Crime Writers of Canada) and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.

Collecting Engel

The Suicide Murders (1980, Clarke Irwin) in first Canadian edition brings $50–$150. Later Cooperman novels are modestly priced ($15–$40). The Man Who Forgot How to Read (2007, HarperCollins Canada) has crossover appeal between mystery collectors and medical/neurological literature. Signed copies are available from Canadian bookshop events.