Bringing Back Benny's Backlist

Canada's crown jewel in PI fiction is Benny Cooperman, the amiable Toronto investigator created by Howard Engel. But both author and protagonist alike have been through some major changes as a result of Engel's stroke, which left him with alexia sine agraphia, an inability to read even though his ability to write was spared. 2005's wonderful THE MEMORY BOOK grew out of Engel's disability, as did his recent memoir THE MAN WHO FORGOT TO READ.

Now comes word, from the National Post's Robert Fulford, that all 12 of the Cooperman novels (including a brand new one, EAST OF SUEZ) are back in print with spiffy new covers:

Far from throwing him off his game, the famous bang on the head that scrambled Benny Cooperman's brains has expanded his reputation. The novels by Howard Engel starring Benny as a soft-boiled private eye are about to become inescapable in bookstores.

Penguin has re-launched the first 11 Cooperman books in paperback with a lively new design and a number emblazoned on the spine of each volume, so that obsessive Cooperman fans can shelve them in order of their creation, from No. 1, The Suicide Murders (1980), to No. 11, Memory Book (2005). This is an exceptional publishing event, something the French might do while promoting someone for a shot at the Nobel. Nobody has done it before, on this scale, for a Canadian.

Benny has established himself as the most insular character inhabiting our national literature. He lives in Grantham, Ontario, a double for Engel's hometown, St. Catharines, Ont., and in the first 11 books he usually travels no farther than 111 kilometres down the highway to Toronto. As for the non-Canadian world, it consists of Miami, nothing else.

But brain injury has changed him. The loss of short-term memory and the loss of his ability to read have mysteriously encouraged a tolerance for foreign countries. In the 12th Cooperman novel, East of Suez (Penguin), he travels to Takot, the fictional capital of fictional Miranam, a one-time French colony. Takot, close to Thailand, is far from the peace, order and good government of Benny's homeland.

Great news, indeed.

Comments

[Dan]

Having never read any of the Cooperman novels, can anyone tell me whose writing they're roughly comparable to?