Engel, Howard

Murder in Montparnasse: A Mystery of Literary Paris

Penzler Pick, January 2001: Howard Engel's Murder in Montparnasse, an intrigue-filled novel set in the Left Bank's glorious heyday in the 1920s, joins Stephen Glazier's The Lost Provinces and William Wiser's Disappearances as an outstanding example of this minigenre. Engel, an award-winning Canadian writer best known for his Benny Cooperman mystery series, makes his narrator a fellow countryman, Mike Ward. An expatriate supporting himself as a translator for a press agency on the Right Bank, Ward prefers to spend his time amid the colorful personalities who are permanent fixtures at the sidewalk cafes of the Left. One of his first acquaintances, J. Miller Waddington, is a sometime boxer and bullfight aficionado who's come to the City of Light intending to write the Great American Novel. Who does that remind you of?

Engel offers other characters both in and out of fictional disguise, and figuring out just who's who provides part of the entertainment value. The Fitzgeralds are on the scene, of course (as Wilson and Georgia O'Donnell), while another famous couple of the era, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, walk through the action as themselves.

But there's another celebrated figure on hand who, in every way possible, is distinctly out of place. Jack the Ripper, or at least a killer who resembles that British fiend, is stalking Montparnasse, the bohemian quarter of the city, and his knife has already left behind five corpses. Not prostitutes, as in London, the victims have been artists' models, although one dead woman was an up-and-coming young painter. Fear is in the streets and starting to seep behind tightly closed shutters, and even in the brightly lit brasseries and bistros there is only a hollow feeling of safety.

While others of his acquaintance watch and wait with the fatalism of the poets and artists that they are, Mike Ward keeps his journalist's instincts about him. It occurs to him to wonder, after the latest slaying, if someone with a grudge against a former lover might not take lethal initiative advantage of the cover provided by the unknown Jack de Paris in order to commit murder and avoid suspicion. One of the best passages, for those keeping an eye out for the celebrities in these pages, is the section where Ward discusses his theories with an engaging character--only very lightly disguised--based on the legendary crime novelist Georges Simenon.

Howard Engel has obviously enjoyed the jigsaw aspects of arranging this quasi- historic mise en scène, and so will those readers whose taste runs both to pastiche and pastis. --Otto Penzler

It's autumn 1925, and a killer uncannily like England's Jack the Ripper is stalking the city streets of Paris and preying on young women. Michael Ward is a journalist newly arrived to the Left Bank. When he falls in with Jason Waddington, an expatriate American writer who introduces him to the cafe scene and his crowd of writers and artists, Ward soon discovers that Jack de Paris is not the only trouble afoot in the City of Light. Rumor has it that Waddington has written a damaging roman a clef about his friends, and tempers are rising even as fear of the killer grips the city. When the body of Laure Duclos is found, it seems their circle has finally been touched by Jack. But Ward has his doubts and begins to wonder whether Laure was truly Jack de Paris's latest victim, or if someone else was using the serial killer as a convenient cover to protect themselves.

In a feat of literature reminiscent of Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Howard Engel blends intriguing historical fact with nail-biting fiction to produce a thriller of the highest order. Murder in Montparnasse will delight both new readers of Engel and his long-time fans.

Memory Book: A Benny Cooperman Detective Novel (Benny Cooperman Mysteries)

The Ransom Game (Penguin Crime Fiction)

A Victim Must be Found

City Called July

There was an Old Woman: A Benny Cooperman Mystery (Benny Cooperman Mysteries)

It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is preoccupied with the death of his elderly girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, who appears to have starved to death. Benny agrees to attend the inquest if Kogan will look into the plumbing.

Lizzy may have died hungry, but she had plenty of money, and somehow former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavory character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. Ramsden escapes the inquest with his reputation untarnished, but Benny finds himself hopelessly enmeshed in the posthumous troubles of Kogan's late love. By the end of this twisting, turning tale, the body count has increased alarmingly-but what's happened with the plumbing?

"Mr. 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)

"Benny Cooperman is one of the most enjoyable private eyes in crime fiction." (The Toronto Star)

"Engel is...one of the best." (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

Dead and Buried: A Benny Cooperman Mystery (Benny Cooperman Mysteries)

Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair. This kinder, gentler detective-funny, smart and squeamish about violence-is the creation of master of the genre Howard Engel, whose enthusiastic fans include Ruth Rendell, Donald E. Westlake, Julian Symons, and Tony Hillerman. 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.

"Engel is . . . one of the best." (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell

Howard Engel is the award-winning writer whose Benny Cooperman mysteries garner rave international reviews-fans stretch to thirteen countries: from Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the United States. His latest, Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell, is a brilliant departure from the Cooperman series, set in the Edinburgh of late 1800s and peopled with such illustrious historical figures as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Benjamin Disraeli.

The year is 1879 and Alan Lambert has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang for the murder of a dazzling opera star and her lover. But Lambert's brother believes in his innocence and pleads with Dr. Bell, a celebrated professor of anatomy, to uncover the truth. Dr. Bell agrees and sets out to crack the case, with his keen powers of deduction and the help of his young student, Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Suicide Murders: A Benny Cooperman Mystery

Lord High Executioner: An Unshamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind

In Lord High Executioner, Howard Engel produces a wonderfully wise and witty social history of the men and women who represent our agents of death, and who have done our dirty work over the centuries.