There Was an Old Woman

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

“In a small town like this, Mr. Cooperman, everybody knows
everybody.” This comment to Benny Cooperman, the most popular Canadian
private investigator in the world, points to a potential drawback of
setting a series of detective novels in a small town: it is stretching
credulity somewhat to think that Benny, in his ninth book, would never
have heard of a local man who owns a chain of restaurants all over North
America and Europe, and who remains visible in the fictional town of
Grantham, Ontario, by working regularly in one of his local restaurants
to keep in touch with the people. This small cavil aside, it is good to
welcome Benny back after his creator, Howard Engel, took time out to
write a non-Cooperman novel.

This time, Benny is hired to discover the after-work activities of a
television news reader. At the same time, as a favor to a friend, he is
looking into the sad death of a reclusive, eccentric woman who died in
apparent squalor, although she had a small fortune in a bank deposit box
and a property worth a great deal of money to developers. Naturally, the
two events link up. I found the dénouement a bit complicated, but then
I often do in this series. Still, we read Benny Cooperman not for the
detection (which is plodding, and for the most part, happily devoid of
profanity and violence), but for the agreeable characters (especially
Benny and his Ma), and for well-crafted scenes set in recognizable
southern Ontario environs and laced with the delightful Engel/Cooperman
wit.