Engel, Howard

Howard Engel was born in 1931 to Jack and Lollie (Greisman) Engel. He grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario where his father owned a women’s clothing store. He attended high school at St. Catharines Collegiate, before attending McMaster University in Hamilton and receiving a teaching degree from the Ontario College of Education. After teaching for one year at Sault Ste Marie, he moved to Paris, where he worked as a writer and reporter for the CBC, including an in-depth piece on Cyprus where he spent several months in 1963. He married Marian (Passmore) Engel (1933-1985) in 1962, and the couple had twins, Charlotte and William in 1965. Back in Canada, he became the producer of CBC radio shows, including Sunday Supplement, The Arts in Review and Anthology. In addition to his producing duties, he also wrote several radio adaptations and episodes, including episodes on true crime and mysteries. He separated from Marian Engel in 1974, and married Janet Hamilton (1952-1998) in 1978, with whom he would have one son, Jacob (1989-). Engel began his career as a writer with poetry and short stories, before publishing his first novel, The Suicide Murders (1980), featuring private detective, Benny Cooperman, who solved crimes in the fictional town of Grantham, based on Engel’s own hometown, St. Catharines. Engel would go on to publish fourteen books in his best-selling Cooperman series, with the books being published internationally in translation. In addition to Benny Cooperman, Engel wrote Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell (1997) featuring the fictionalized life of the young Arthur Conan Doyle, and two novels featuring Canadian journalist, Mike Ward, who solves crimes while on location in Paris, London and Hollywood. While best known for his mystery writing, Engel also penned several non-fiction novels including Lord High Executioner (1996) and Crimes of Passion: An Unblinking Look at Murderous Love (2001). Engel was involved in several Crime Writers Associations, particularly the Crime Writers of Canada, which he co-founded in 1986. In 2001, Engel suffered a stroke, which resulted in a diagnosis of alexia sine agraphia – a condition which prevented Engel from being able to understand written words, although he was still able to write. His fictional detective, Benny Cooperman would suffer the same condition in Memory Book (2005), and Engel would later pen a memoir about his stroke in The Man Who Forgot How to Read, which was published with an afterword by the neurologist, Oliver Sacks (1933-2015). Engel was a well-sought public speaker giving talks on his writing, mysteries and Benny Cooperman, and he received an honorary doctorate from Brock University in1994. Engel was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada in 2007. He died on 16 July 2019 at the age of 88.