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Benny Cooperman #2
The Ransom Game
Benny Cooperman's second murder case revolves around the half-million dollar kidnapping of a rich heiress. Although Gloria Warren was returned unharmed and the kidnappers caught, no one found the money. The quest is on for the missing ransom.
When Benny finds himself working directly for the Warren family, he must cope with the culture-shock of plying between his nickel-and-dime office and the regal mansion perched high on the Niagara Escarpment. The hairpin turns on the approach road are matched by many skillful twists of the plot, as Benny gradually unravels an astonishing sequence of events.
When Benny finds himself working directly for the Warren family, he must cope with the culture-shock of plying between his nickel-and-dime office and the regal mansion perched high on the Niagara Escarpment. The hairpin turns on the approach road are matched by many skillful twists of the plot, as Benny gradually unravels an astonishing sequence of events.
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
7 people are currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Howard Engel
32 books29 followersHoward Engel was a pioneering, award-winning Canadian mystery and non-fiction author. He is famous for his Benny Cooperman private-eye series, set in the Niagara Region of Ontario.
He and Eric Wright are two of the authors responsible for founding Crime Writers Of Canada. He had twins Charlotte and William with authoress, Marian Engel. He has a son, Jacob, with his late wife, authoress Janet Hamilton: with whom he co-wrote "Murder In Space".
A stroke in 2001 famously caused "alexia sine agraphia". It was a disease that hampered Howard's ability to comprehend written words, even though he could continue to write! He retired in Toronto, where he continued to inspire and mentor future authors and writers of all kinds. Maureen Jennings, creator of the Murdoch novels and still-running television series, is among them.
Unfortunately, he died of pneumonia that arose after a stroke. True animal-lovers: Howard's beloved living cat, Kali, is included by their family in his obituary.
He and Eric Wright are two of the authors responsible for founding Crime Writers Of Canada. He had twins Charlotte and William with authoress, Marian Engel. He has a son, Jacob, with his late wife, authoress Janet Hamilton: with whom he co-wrote "Murder In Space".
A stroke in 2001 famously caused "alexia sine agraphia". It was a disease that hampered Howard's ability to comprehend written words, even though he could continue to write! He retired in Toronto, where he continued to inspire and mentor future authors and writers of all kinds. Maureen Jennings, creator of the Murdoch novels and still-running television series, is among them.
Unfortunately, he died of pneumonia that arose after a stroke. True animal-lovers: Howard's beloved living cat, Kali, is included by their family in his obituary.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 31, 2021
“The Ransom Game”, 1981 is very aptly-named. It is strange this is merely the second piece of work I know by Howard Engel. I adore him; immediately a favourite Canadian author. I love every phrase, the flow of musings, the atmosphere of Canadian winter, the vividly conveyed demonstration that visitors broadening our thoughts lift the doldrums. St. Catherine’s is minutes from Niagara Falls, which this series calls ”Grantham”. Elements of the Niagara Escarpment jut near enough to receive frequent mention; a highly rewarding setting for a change because I’ve been to both.
A kidnapping six years past, turns an unaccounted ransom hoard into a treasure hunt. The main player disappeared and a girlfriend hires Benny. The three other thugs are interviewed and a ball is tossed, as we trek with Benny to ascertain what’s what. Like the début mystery, the solution must be gleaned from the past. We see a real investigation through. Something I love about the 1980s is that it is as modern as we get, without relying on computers or cellular telephones; like the baby’s soother they have become. People don’t dream of functioning without them. The 1980s remind us how to be resourceful. A million other tools have always been at our disposal.
Howard’s mysteries are stimulating and his extraordinary writing gift achieves an idyllic balance. The quirks of a real person impress upon us, like Benny’s regular café “The Bagel Place”, that has never once had bagels on-hand! His simple joke is hilarious, “Thank goodness it wasn’t named the coffee place”! There’s no moment without a personal touch, yet the mystery is always attended to, front and centre. The pace grooves but ambience and feeling enhance every step. Howard’s creativity must be sampled firsthand. Unbelievably, I love this book even more than “The Suicide Murders”.
A kidnapping six years past, turns an unaccounted ransom hoard into a treasure hunt. The main player disappeared and a girlfriend hires Benny. The three other thugs are interviewed and a ball is tossed, as we trek with Benny to ascertain what’s what. Like the début mystery, the solution must be gleaned from the past. We see a real investigation through. Something I love about the 1980s is that it is as modern as we get, without relying on computers or cellular telephones; like the baby’s soother they have become. People don’t dream of functioning without them. The 1980s remind us how to be resourceful. A million other tools have always been at our disposal.
Howard’s mysteries are stimulating and his extraordinary writing gift achieves an idyllic balance. The quirks of a real person impress upon us, like Benny’s regular café “The Bagel Place”, that has never once had bagels on-hand! His simple joke is hilarious, “Thank goodness it wasn’t named the coffee place”! There’s no moment without a personal touch, yet the mystery is always attended to, front and centre. The pace grooves but ambience and feeling enhance every step. Howard’s creativity must be sampled firsthand. Unbelievably, I love this book even more than “The Suicide Murders”.
October 15, 2025
4 Stars. Couldn't be a five. It's close but confusing. In this one, Benny Cooperman's like a juggler with five oranges in the air and an injured right hand. If it's difficult for a private eye to keep track of the moving parts, please lend a sympathetic ear to us readers. Especially me. I do the full GR Monty for most mysteries I read - the characters, settings, description, etc. I so wish this was my second reading; I would have checked the who's-who more than once! Benny's bored. It's February, business is slow, and the weather is typical for a Canadian winter, cold and windy with snow and slush - "oh to be in Florida with mom and dad, brother Sam and cousin Melvyn." Then a lovely blond, Muriel Falkirk, ascends to his office with a problem. Seems easy, her boyfriend is missing. Johnny Rosa. There's a ring to that name and Benny asks, "Wasn't he mixed up in the Warren kidnapping some years ago?" And then, "The ransom money, I don't think it was ever recovered." Benny's got it; that's the gist of the case. A half million. Benny goes through two clients and even a girlfriend as he tries to keep the oranges in the air. I loved it. (Au2021/Oc2025)
September 30, 2017
Yes indeed, I am enjoying the reading of the Benny Cooperman series. It is the perfect thing to have on hand when one cannot sleep through the night, a thing that happens to me when seasons change.
We find Benny bemoaning his fate having to stay in the frigid climes faithfully watering his mother's plants in a town close to Niagara Falls, whilst his parents enjoy Miami for the winter. "I wished that I could find a compromise between the intolerable weather outside and the overheated weather inside. I think the name of the compromise is Miami."
Before long his agency door is opened by a hot new client with one heck of a job to keep him busy. "I thought about the story she'd told in my office. An Academy Award performance. The inconsistencies glared at me...After a while, like Hammett says, you believe the money not the story."
What ensues after the initial hiring to find a missing man, missing money, etc. is the death of the first client with more action to follow. Every mobster and petty criminal in the area wants to follow Benny and get their hands on the missing ransom money from a kidnapping from years ago.
After all is said and done, with the help of his two police buddies, Ouzo does it work. "Ouzo hit me like a binge of licorice. I was fine so long as I didn't try to get up."
We find Benny bemoaning his fate having to stay in the frigid climes faithfully watering his mother's plants in a town close to Niagara Falls, whilst his parents enjoy Miami for the winter. "I wished that I could find a compromise between the intolerable weather outside and the overheated weather inside. I think the name of the compromise is Miami."
Before long his agency door is opened by a hot new client with one heck of a job to keep him busy. "I thought about the story she'd told in my office. An Academy Award performance. The inconsistencies glared at me...After a while, like Hammett says, you believe the money not the story."
What ensues after the initial hiring to find a missing man, missing money, etc. is the death of the first client with more action to follow. Every mobster and petty criminal in the area wants to follow Benny and get their hands on the missing ransom money from a kidnapping from years ago.
After all is said and done, with the help of his two police buddies, Ouzo does it work. "Ouzo hit me like a binge of licorice. I was fine so long as I didn't try to get up."
July 26, 2018
A decent read.
Note: I used togive full reviews for all of the books that I rated on GR. However, GR's new giveaway policies (Good Reads 2017 November Giveaways Policies Changes) have caused me to change my reviewing decisions. These new GR policies seem to harm smaller publishing efforts in favour of providing advantage to the larger companies (GR Authors' Feedback), the big five publishers (Big Five Publishers). So, because of these policies from now on I will be supporting smaller publishing effort by only giving full reviews to books published by: companies outside the big five companies, indie publishers, and self-published authors. This book was published by one of the big five companies so will not receive a more detailed review by me.
Note: I used togive full reviews for all of the books that I rated on GR. However, GR's new giveaway policies (Good Reads 2017 November Giveaways Policies Changes) have caused me to change my reviewing decisions. These new GR policies seem to harm smaller publishing efforts in favour of providing advantage to the larger companies (GR Authors' Feedback), the big five publishers (Big Five Publishers). So, because of these policies from now on I will be supporting smaller publishing effort by only giving full reviews to books published by: companies outside the big five companies, indie publishers, and self-published authors. This book was published by one of the big five companies so will not receive a more detailed review by me.
September 12, 2025
I have no memory of the first book and cannot understand for the life of me why I gave it such a high rating. Trying to follow the names and relationships between all the characters was definitely a challenge in this book as I mentioned in the last one, but what was also distracting was the sheer number of typos, ranging from incorrect punctuation usage to missing words to paragraph breaks in the middle of a sentence. All things a copy editor would have easily spotted and fixed.
This book reads like a Canadian mafia novel, so basically mafia lite. Which I use to mean all the characters have hints of or outright similarities to standard archetypes that we see in mafia media, but with far less violence and guns. For such an 'average joe' type character, Benny still manages to make every woman he meets fall in love with him on sight as if he's 007. And Engel as the author does so much jumping around in this book with almost no bridging between scenes, so most of the time you have no idea where Benny is going or why. And while the mystery gets explained at the end in a very Dr. Thorndyke-esque manner by Benny, it felt like such a setup as to be impossible to guess because of how little information Engel provides us regarding details, scenery, and Benny's inner speculation about the whole thing. Even with the whole thing explained I still didn't totally follow it all.
To be honest, if I hadn't paid for this book I probably would have given up on it really early. But after reading this one I have no interest in reading the third one, paid for or not.
This book reads like a Canadian mafia novel, so basically mafia lite. Which I use to mean all the characters have hints of or outright similarities to standard archetypes that we see in mafia media, but with far less violence and guns. For such an 'average joe' type character, Benny still manages to make every woman he meets fall in love with him on sight as if he's 007. And Engel as the author does so much jumping around in this book with almost no bridging between scenes, so most of the time you have no idea where Benny is going or why. And while the mystery gets explained at the end in a very Dr. Thorndyke-esque manner by Benny, it felt like such a setup as to be impossible to guess because of how little information Engel provides us regarding details, scenery, and Benny's inner speculation about the whole thing. Even with the whole thing explained I still didn't totally follow it all.
To be honest, if I hadn't paid for this book I probably would have given up on it really early. But after reading this one I have no interest in reading the third one, paid for or not.
November 16, 2009
"Ransom Game" was recommended to me by the owner of an independent book store in Stratford, Ontario. I was surprised to find that there are a number of good Canadian authors that aren't easily available or known in this country. Howard Engel is one of them.
His Benny Cooperman series is referred to "as an institution of Canuck crime writing" by NOW (Toronto).
Set in Grantham, near Niagara Falls, in the early 1980s, Benny is a Jewish boy in a Protestant town. An unassuming, laid-back private investigator, he doesn't stop until he gets to the bottom of a problem.
Author Howard Engel has a way with words and can turn a descriptive term on a dime. There are twelve titles in this series and it looks like Penguin Canada has begun to re-release them.
The author suffered a small stoke in 2000 that left him with "a rare disorder that rendered him able to write but unable to read". He had his PI Benny Cooperman suffer the same ailment in his 11th book in the series "The Cooperman Variations".
His Benny Cooperman series is referred to "as an institution of Canuck crime writing" by NOW (Toronto).
Set in Grantham, near Niagara Falls, in the early 1980s, Benny is a Jewish boy in a Protestant town. An unassuming, laid-back private investigator, he doesn't stop until he gets to the bottom of a problem.
Author Howard Engel has a way with words and can turn a descriptive term on a dime. There are twelve titles in this series and it looks like Penguin Canada has begun to re-release them.
The author suffered a small stoke in 2000 that left him with "a rare disorder that rendered him able to write but unable to read". He had his PI Benny Cooperman suffer the same ailment in his 11th book in the series "The Cooperman Variations".
May 21, 2021
Benny Cooperman, a licensed private investigator in the town of Grantham. He's down in the dumps as it is February, cold outside not much work and lots of the townsfolk, including his parents, have gone to Florida. Into his office walks a tall well built blonde with long legs, Just the sort of start for this type of detective story. The whole plot centres upon an old kidnap case where the villains were caught and jailed but are now out on parole. The questions are, where is the money and why are there so many deaths associated with the case?
Benny is not Mike Hammer, prefers a glass of milk to whiskey and does not carry a gun in the classic North American detective mould. He does seem to stumble along and eventually uncovers the plot. Fast past, easy read with enough twist to be enjoyable.
3 to 3.5 stars.
Benny is not Mike Hammer, prefers a glass of milk to whiskey and does not carry a gun in the classic North American detective mould. He does seem to stumble along and eventually uncovers the plot. Fast past, easy read with enough twist to be enjoyable.
3 to 3.5 stars.
October 13, 2017
I love the style of these books. Witty, fast-paced, suspenseful, well-developed characters, perfectly-paced revelations. Benny is a hoot and I enjoy spending time with him. This plot was complex at the end, though it didn't seem to be during the telling. Full of twists I didn't anticipate.
April 24, 2010
Benny Cooperman is a small time private eye, stuck in Gratham, Ontario, and it's winter. He's daydreaming about joining his folks in Florida when a beautiful blond walks in the door. She wants to hire Benny to find her good friend Johnny Rosa.
Johnny is out of jail now, but he's got lots of folks out looking for him. Him or the half a million dollars ransom he managed to collect on the kidnapping that sent him to jail. Once word gets out that Benny is on the case, he's got folks looking for him, too.Things, naturally, take a few twists, and somebody winds up dead. Will Benny figure out who's behind it all before he's dead, too?
I don't read a lot of noir, but I found myself thinking about my friends here who would enjoy this book. It's different from my usual read, but I liked it too. I couldn't help guessing that Benny was making a few dumb mistakes, but it turned out that he was one step ahead of me too. This is the second in the series, and I didn't read the first, but I don't feel like I missed anything by reading them out of order. Probably out of print, but if you like the genre, worth looking for.
Johnny is out of jail now, but he's got lots of folks out looking for him. Him or the half a million dollars ransom he managed to collect on the kidnapping that sent him to jail. Once word gets out that Benny is on the case, he's got folks looking for him, too.Things, naturally, take a few twists, and somebody winds up dead. Will Benny figure out who's behind it all before he's dead, too?
I don't read a lot of noir, but I found myself thinking about my friends here who would enjoy this book. It's different from my usual read, but I liked it too. I couldn't help guessing that Benny was making a few dumb mistakes, but it turned out that he was one step ahead of me too. This is the second in the series, and I didn't read the first, but I don't feel like I missed anything by reading them out of order. Probably out of print, but if you like the genre, worth looking for.
August 15, 2010
The Ransom Game had a lot of the same wit that I loved so much in The Suicide Murders: A Benny Cooperman Mystery, but I didn't think the mystery was as well put together. The last 30 pages of the book were straight up explanation! I love PI novels, & especially having a series set in the Great White North, but this was kind of a let down.
July 23, 2016
3.5 stars
This is my second Benny Cooperman. They are interesting books -- very much an updated version of noirish, Golden Age stuff. And Benny is easy to spend time with. I found this plotline a little confusing with a lot of characters appearing and disappearing. But the writing is tight and the perspective is just jaded enough.
This is my second Benny Cooperman. They are interesting books -- very much an updated version of noirish, Golden Age stuff. And Benny is easy to spend time with. I found this plotline a little confusing with a lot of characters appearing and disappearing. But the writing is tight and the perspective is just jaded enough.
April 29, 2020
I loved this book, and I will be scouring the secondhand book shops for more! Benny is a wonderful creation - he prefers a lunch of chopped egg sandwiches, with a glass of milk and vanilla ice cream to a shot of rye, and is neither tall nor imposing, but he's a dogged sleuth with the tenacity of a terrier.
October 10, 2021
An attempt at a noir mystery set in 1981 Canada. It grows on you. At first I wasn’t even sure if I would bother to finish, but by 50 pages from the end I wanted to know how it would come out. And if Benny’s mother would share her recipe for chicken soup. Not a great book but a worthwhile diversion.
April 2, 2022
Benny is a likable character — I especially enjoyed his reaction to eating bacon for the first time — and very persistent. The plot has many twists and turns, but the ending is quite satisfactory, even if I did guess some of it.
August 17, 2010
Benny Cooperman is an entirely lovable PI, with a self-deprecating wit that belies his uncanny ability to solve the most complicated puzzles in Grantham!
July 23, 2011
A Benny Cooperman mystery is always a good read, light, a nice crime and the setting of Niagara Falls and area.
December 20, 2014
Liked it!
August 9, 2015
Hi hum. Nothing memorable. Would probably be an okay audible during a long boring drive
October 13, 2017
Not a 'hard-boiled' detective, but a 'chopped egg on white toast' one.
Well, maybe you have to have lived in the area, but I LOVE these books....
Well, maybe you have to have lived in the area, but I LOVE these books....
January 14, 2018
Clever and well paced. Really enjoyed the Canadian setting. Love Benny.
March 5, 2018
so many characters confusing in begining
January 20, 2019
Very fun and witty read. Although it was difficult to keep track of all the characters because there were so many I would still recommend it for anyone looking for a quick-paced mystery to dive into.
November 29, 2023
Benny Cooperman is a private detective. I really like this author. The mystery keeps you hanging on.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews