There Was an Old Woman - Softcover

Engel, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0670852597 ISBN 13: 9780670852598

Publisher: Viking, 1993

Synopsis

Benny Cooperman, the working-stiff private eye, is back, this time trying to sort out the kerfuffle surrounding the plumbing, a dead old woman, and a crooked politician.

It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is too preoccupied with the death of his girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, an elderly woman who appears to have starved to death. Lizzy may have died hungry, but she had plenty of money, and somehow former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavoury character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. As Benny gets enmeshed in the case the body count increases alarmingly—but what’s happened with the plumbing?

Book 8 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series.

About this title

About the Author

Howard Engel is a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association of Canada and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction. His most recent book, Murder in Montparnasse, is his first departure from the Cooperman.

From Kirkus Reviews

Benny Cooperman, the low-key Grantham, Ontario, private eye who has as little success shushing his Jewish mother as getting Kogan, the janitor of his building, to fix the leaky hall toilet, agrees to a trade: If Kogan will deal with the plumbing, Benny will plumb the death of his pal Lizzy Oldridge, who died of starvation because her safe-deposit box cosigner, Thurleigh Ramsden, wouldn't release funds to her. Nosing around the inquest, Benny draws the attention of posh lawyer Julian Newby, who, surprisingly, invites him to lunch and asks him to tail ravishing TV news anchor Catherine Bracken for unspecified reasons. The tailing, however, doesn't take up too much time, and Benny's soon chatting up Ramsden, discovering in the hours before the banker's death that Ramsden's Guild of the Admirable Bede is a scheme to funnel oldsters' funds into his pocket, then learning that scary Steve Morella has real-estate plans that hinge on grabbing Lizzy's house, which she'd willed to the Bede Guild. More menace is supplied by a series of blackmailers who've been harassing the tony Ravenswood family for years; CXAN station manager Orv Wishart is only the latest to ante up. A few key words from his mom ("I'd rather eat an unkosher chicken . . . than talk to that man," she says of one suspect), and Benny has solved a case whose body count rivals those of the hard-boiled detective novels Catherine's boyfriend turns out. Benny's a charmer, and Engel again skewers Americanisms while serving up a deliciously nonsensical murder-on-wry. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0670852597
• ISBN 13: 9780670852598
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320