Howard Engel

Thirty real-life accounts of passion gone lethally wrong Celebrated mystery writer Howard Engel traces the history of the crime of passion through France, England, Canada, and the United States in his first nonfiction book. The story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England, is explored along with more familiar, modern cases, such as those of O. J. Simpson and Lorena Bobbitt. With each sordid tale, Engel explores the legal codes and moral implications...

It's February and Ontario is frozen-along with Benny Cooperman's private investigation business. That is, until Muriel Falkirk knocks on Cooperman's door. Her boyfriend, Johnny Rosa, is missing. A decade earlier, Rosa had been involved in the kidnapping of an heiress. He was sent to prison and the ransom money was never recovered. Now Rosa's out on parole, but he's nowhere to be found-and it turns out Cooperman isn't the only one on his trail.  ...

Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair-a witty, egg-salad-loving, gentlemanly Jewish detective with a pronounced squeamishness when things get violent. In his most baffling case yet, Cooperman is snugly tucked in his bed in quiet Grantham, a Canadian town near Niagara Falls, when three unsavory thugs drag him out and present him like a trophy to notorious crime boss Abram Wise. Someone has made two attempts on the gangster's life, and with no one...

The remarkable journey of an award-winning writer struck with a rare and devastating affliction that prevented him from reading even his own writing. One hot midsummer morning, novelist Howard Engel picked up his newspaper from his front step and discovered he could no longer read it. The letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves into something that looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next. While he slept, Engel had experienced a stroke...

It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny Cooperman's janitor, Kogan, is preoccupied with the demise of his elderly girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, who appears to have starved to death. Cooperman 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 the former alderman and mayoral candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavory character if there ever was one, has gained control...

A killer walks among the bohemians and expats of the Left Bank . . . "Engel's descriptions of Paris in the twenties are charming, adding to the fun." -Publishers Weekly Michael Ward is a journalist newly arrived in the City of Light when he falls in with Jason Waddington, an expatriate bullfight-loving American who introduces him to the cafe scene and his crowd of fellow writers and artists. At the moment though, the most talked-about figure in...