There Was an Old Woman (Benny Cooperman Mysteries) - Hardcover

Engel, Howard

3.84

45 ratings by Goodreads

9781585670444: There Was an Old Woman (Benny Cooperman Mysteries)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585670448 ISBN 13: 9781585670444

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2000

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It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is preoccupied with the death of his sometime girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, who appears to have starved to death. Benny 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 former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavory character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. Ramsden escapes the inquest with his reputation untarnished, while Benny finds himself hopelessly enmeshed in the posthumous troubles of Kogan's late love. By the end of this twisting, turning tale, the body count has increased alarmingly. But has the toilet been fixed? Only Benny and his loyal readers now for sure.

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About the Author:

Howard Engel is the winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction and creator of the acclaimed Benny Cooperman mystery series as well as Murder in Montparnasse, a departure from the series. He is a founding member of the Crime Writer's Association of Canada, where his private eye has been described as a cherished national institution.

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.

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