I know very little about St Catharines/Grantham, but I've lived five miles down the road from a Canadian toxic waste disposal firm since 1990 (when this book was published). I got no sense of familiarity. The reality is both more audacious than the fiction, and less -- in the 90s I heard persistent rumours about the worst case scenario for the most toxic of wastes, dig a big hole, roll in the tanker trailer (probably leaking already, at the end of its useful life) and bury it whole. Come to find out the stories are true and that was at one time standard operating procedure. These guys in Grantham were wimpy, burying stuff a few barrels at a time under the foundations of a historic fort, and under the floral clocks in Niagara Falls as well. Penny ante stuff. On the other hand, putting a corpse in with the barrels is a bit over the top even for the most criminal of toxic waste companies, at least in Canada. The situation in this book is not the same kind of struggle that permeated the 1990s here in the shadow of TriCil, Laidlaw, SafetyKleen, Clean Harbors (they keep selling the company, probably for nefarious reasons). It's an interesting story and Engel has the environmental message correct, but it's like a different world. ( )

I read this book years ago -- early 2000s(?). I remembered this as I was reading it again and came across the word "earthworks". I had never come across this word before the first time reading this book, and being set in Canada and written by a Canadian I thought it was a made up Canadian word -- it was funny to me. I remembered this when I came across this word again, now having seen it in other books and knowing the meaning better.

So this novel was written in 1991 and I was amazed to come across the same exact "climate change and protecting our environment" arguments and "business men" arguing that the bottom line is far more important than anything else, and "it won't effect my children because they'll have my money, and will continue to make more money and can buy their way out of danger... and their grandchildren aren't my concern" ... I was floored to see the exact same arguments and excuses that we see today in 2020.

I was so blown away by the away in which absolutely NOTHING has changed in regards to businesses and the environment that I have decided to keep this book so I can reread it in 2030 to see, yet again, how much NOTHING has changed!

Adrianne ( )

Who else but a Canadian could write a mystery starring Benny Cooperman, small town private investigator who drives a beat up car and whose favourite meal is a chopped egg sandwich? In this outing Benny is hired by the widow of a man killed while working for a waste disposal company. The death was considered an accident by the coroner but the widow is sure her husband was killed, especially since she keeps getting money from the company every time she asks questions. Benny is apprehensive about taking the case because he was once punched in the nose by the man who owns the waste disposal company. When he learns that his assailant is no longer working at the company but instead for the parent company he feels a little better and starts to investigate. Soon he is learning more than he cares to know about PCBs and dioxin and other toxic waste. He also stumbles across a dead body and almost gets taken for a boat ride with no return. (He is saved from that fate by two friends of his parents who come along in the parking lot of the seafood restaurant where he was taken. See what I mean about the Canadianness?) Benny solves the case, of course, but the perpetrator can't be prosecuted.

I like these Benny Cooperman mysteries but this isn't the best one that I've read. It moved along pretty slowly until the final few chapters. As well, Engel was using the book as a soapbox about toxic waste and I felt he overdid it a little. There are lots of issues about toxic waste but I find it hard to believe companies are putting barrels of the stuff under the floral clock in Niagara Falls.

Nevertheless, it's a nice light read for a summer's day and I hope the person who finds the book enjoys it. ( )