Murder on Location was published by Clarke, Irwin in 1982, and it brings the entertainment industry to Grantham — a film crew arrives to shoot a period drama, and when a member of the production is murdered, Benny finds himself investigating in a world where everyone is an actor (both literally and figuratively) and where the line between performance and reality is deliberately blurred.
Engel uses the film-crew premise to explore the collision between two cultures: the glamorous, transient world of film production and the settled, routine world of small-city Ontario. The locals are simultaneously excited (real movie stars!) and resentful (the disruption, the condescension, the assumption that Grantham is merely a location rather than a community). Benny, characteristically, belongs to neither world: he observes both with the same dry, analytical detachment.
The mystery itself is well-constructed — the closed world of a film production provides natural suspects, motives, and red herrings — but as always in Engel’s novels, the pleasure lies less in the puzzle than in the character work: Benny’s interactions with the larger-than-life personalities of the film world reveal new facets of his own modest, stubborn, self-aware character.
Collecting Murder on Location
First edition (Clarke, Irwin, Toronto, 1982): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Without jacket: $5–$12