Henry Carter Hull

To say that Canadian private investigator Benny Cooperman is a novice in the art world would be an understatement. Nevertheless, he's hired by Pambos Kiriakis, the manager of Grantham's poshest hotel, to track down some valuable works that went missing while on loan from a local gallery. But while Cooperman is hobnobbing with the art-collecting glitterati, things take a deadly turn. His client is stabbed, and a peculiar clue is left in a coffee cup...

When a trusted lawyer runs off with the savings of more than 50 clients, totaling around $2 million, Rabbi Meltzer and Saul Tepperman of the B'nai Shalom synagogue in Grantham, Ontario, know Benny Cooperman's just the man to track down the funds. Tepperman has known the detective since Cooperman's bar mitzvah, so the sleuth isn't in a position to turn down the request for help. This summer is bound to be a real scorcher, and the heat will be on Cooperman...

Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair-a witty, egg-salad-loving, gentlemanly Jewish detective with a pronounced squeamishness when things get violent. In his most baffling case yet, Cooperman is snugly tucked in his bed in quiet Grantham, a Canadian town near Niagara Falls, when three unsavory thugs drag him out and present him like a trophy to notorious crime boss Abram Wise. Someone has made two attempts on the gangster's life, and with no one...

It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny Cooperman's janitor, Kogan, is preoccupied with the demise of his elderly girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, who appears to have starved to death. Cooperman 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 the former alderman and mayoral candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavory character if there ever was one, has gained control...