Howard Engel

Howard Engel CM (April 2, 1931 – July 16, 2019) was a Canadian mystery author and CBC producer who resided in Toronto, Ontario. He was famous for his Benny Cooperman detective series, set in the Niagara Region in and around the city of Grantham, Ontario, mirroring St. Catharines, Ontario, where he was born. He was one of the founding authors of Crime Writers Of Canada in 1982.[1]

Howard Engel
Engel in 2007
Engel in 2007
Born(1931-04-02)April 2, 1931
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
DiedJuly 16, 2019(2019-07-16) (aged 88)
OccupationWriter, producer
NationalityCanadian
GenreMystery and non-fiction
Notable worksBenny Cooperman series
Spouse
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1962; div. 1978)​
  • Janet Hamilton
Children3

Personal life

From 1962 to 1978 he was married to Marian Engel,[2] a noted Canadian author of literary fiction, who died in 1985. They had two children,[3] twins Charlotte and William, born in 1965. Charlotte currently is an independent television producer. Howard married Canadian novelist Janet Hamilton.[4] The couple have one son, Jacob Engel, born in 1989.

In 2001, he unknowingly suffered a stroke that left him with alexia sine agraphia, a condition that prevented him from understanding written words without a major effort without affecting his ability to write.[5] He was later able to write a new novel, Memory Book (2005), in which his character Benny Cooperman suffers a blow to the head and is similarly affected. He later published The Man Who Forgot How To Read (2007), a memoir of the time he spent recovering from the stroke, with an afterword by Oliver Sacks (who wrote about Howard's reading problems in the book The Mind's Eye), and another novel, East of Suez, in 2008.[6]

In February 2007, Howard was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, receiving it at the 100th investiture. In 2013, Engel received a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal.[7] He died in Toronto on July 16, 2019, of pneumonia that arose from a stroke, at the age of 88.[7]

Bibliography

Benny Cooperman novels
  • The Suicide Murders (1980), ISBN 0-7720-1304-7 (Adapted as an CBC TV movie starring Saul Rubinek)
  • The Ransom Game (1981), ISBN 0-7720-1364-0
  • Murder On Location (1982), ISBN 0-7720-1384-5
  • Murder Sees The Light (1984), ISBN 0-670-80304-9 (Adapted as a CBC TV movie starring Saul Rubinek)
  • A City Called July (1986), ISBN 0-670-81268-4
  • A Victim Must Be Found (1988), ISBN 0-670-82298-1
  • Dead And Buried (1990) ISBN 0-670-83116-6
  • The Whole Megillah (1991) publisher BOOKCITY Bookmasters Limited 501 Bloor Street West Toronto
  • There Was An Old Woman (1993), ISBN 0-670-85259-7
  • Getting Away With Murder (1995), ISBN 0-670-86078-6
  • My Brother's Keeper (2001), ISBN 1-55278-327-8 (with Eric Wright[8])
  • The Cooperman Variations (2001), ISBN 0-14-029744-8
  • Memory Book (2005), ISBN 0-14-301665-2
  • East Of Suez (2008), ISBN 978-0-14-305333-0
  • Over the River's (2018),

ISBN 9781770864580

Other Novels
  • Murder In Space (1985), ISBN 0-140-08370-7 (FX Woolf was a pen-name for Howard Engels and Janet Hamilton).
  • Murder In Montparnasse (1992), ISBN 0-670-84068-8
  • Mr. Doyle And Dr. Bell (1997), ISBN 0-670-87755-7
  • A Child's Christmas In Scarborough (1997), ISBN 1-55013-922-3

Non-fiction
  • Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look At Hangmen, Headsmen, And Their Kind (1996), ISBN 1-55013-704-2
  • Crimes Of Passion: An Unblinking Look At Murderous Love (2001), ISBN 1-55263-355-1
  • The Man Who Forgot How To Read (2007), ISBN 978-0-00-200714-6

Anthologies
  • Criminal Shorts: Mysteries By Canadian Crime Writers (1992), ISBN 0-7715-9160-8 (ed. with Eric Wright)

References
  1. Black, Debra (2007-02-21). "Order of Canada recipients". The Toronto Star. p. A12. Retrieved 2007-02-21.
  2. Levin, Martin (2019-08-02). "Pioneering Canadian mystery writer Howard Engel lost the ability to read, but didn't let that stop him". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  3. Levin, Martin (2019-08-02). "Pioneering Canadian mystery writer Howard Engel lost the ability to read, but didn't let that stop him". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  4. "Howard Engel: Man of mystery". www.everythingzoomer.com. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  5. The Man Who Forgot How To Read And Other Stories at bbc.co.uk
  6. Conan, Neal (July 24, 2008). "Howard Engel: 'The Man Who Forgot How To Read'". Talk of the Nation. NPR. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
  7. Kelly, Brian (July 26, 2019). "Crime writer Engel started in Sault". Retrieved August 21, 2015.
  8. Wright, Marion Thompson; Logan, Rayford W. (1946). "Am I My Brother's Keeper?". The Journal of Negro Education. 15 (2): 212. doi:10.2307/2965970. ISSN 0022-2984. JSTOR 2965970.
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