Engel's 11th Benny Cooperman mystery (The Cooperman Variations
, etc.) is notable because it's the Canadian author's first novel since 2000, when a small stroke left him with a rare disorder that rendered him able to write but unable to read. His PI hero suffers from the same ailment as he wakes from a recurring dream about a train wreck to find himself in a Toronto hospital. It turns out Benny has been in a coma for eight weeks after being found in a Dumpster near the university with a near-fatal blow to the head—next to the body of a young female professor, dead of a similar head trauma. Using a small notebook in which he jots things as they occur to him—a memory book—Benny and girlfriend Anna Abraham reconstruct his most recent case. An anonymously sent basket of roses triggers the name Rose
or Rosie
, while the sudden disappearance of a student and a prominent faculty member suggests conspiracy. Engel is better on the mechanics of Benny's disorder, and on his laborious recovery process, than he is at creating sleuthful suspense. Benny's vividness, and that of a variety of incidental characters, carries the book. (Jan.)
