Dead and Buried: A Benny Cooperman Mystery - Hardcover

Howard Engel, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction, is a founding member of the Crime Writer's Association of Canada where his private eye, Benny Cooperman, has been described as a cherished national institution.

Engel's Benny Cooperman series has attracted a devoted audience in Canada (where the author lives) and Europe, but it has never achieved the recognition it deserves in the U.S. Benny, a private detective in fictional Grantham, Ontario, is a marvelous creation--a hardworking fellow whose innate bad luck just keeps leading him into the wrong cases. (Think Jim Rockford minus the proclivity for getting into fistfights.) This time around, Benny is finagled into investigating a yearold death. A widow is convinced that her husband was murdered by the company he worked for, and Benny, poor fellow, agrees to help her prove it. Naturally, one murder leads to more murders, and soon Benny's own life is on the line. In many ways, the Cooperman novels are similar to other privateeye series--certainly the plots themselves aren't particularly original--but the atmospheric setting and the charmingly idiosyncratic characters make them seem entirely fresh. Recommended for all readers, but especially for fans of privateeye yarns who are tired of the same old thing. David Pitt
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