Is writing zero bytes to a network stream a reliable way to detect closed connections?

I'm working on an application where a client connects with a TCP connection which then triggers an amount of work that may potentially take a lot of time to complete. This work must be cancelled if the user drops the TCP connection.

Currently, what I'm doing is starting up a timer that periodically checks the networks streams connectivity by doing this:

// stream is a Stream instance
var abort = false;
using (new Timer(x => {
   try
   {
      stream.Write(new byte[0], 0, 0);
   }
   catch (Exception)
   {
      abort = true;
   }
}, null, 1000, 1000))
{
   // Do expensive work here and check abort periodically
}

I would have liked to read the CanWrite, CanRead or Connected but they report the last status of the stream. Is writing zero bytes a reliable way of testing connectivity, or can this itself cause issues? I cannot write or read any real data on the stream since that would mess up the client.