That Day the Rabbi Left Town - Hardcover

Kemelman, Harry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0449910024 ISBN 13: 9780449910023

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1996

Synopsis

The New York Times Book Review called Harry Kemelman's last Rabbi Small novel, The Day the Rabbi Resigned, "a deft murder mystery. . .very smooth and wonderfully sly." Now, in The Day the Rabbi Left Town, America's most unorthodox detective deserts his old haunts for new challenges. But the more things change the more they stay the same, especially where murder is concerned. . . .

Having resigned as rabbi of Barnard's Crossing Temple, Rabbi David Small is delighted to accept the newly created post of Professor of Judaic Studies at Windermere College in Boston. The position is just what he wanted, even though the English faculty, with whom he is temporarily domiciled, appears oddly unsettled by his presence.

Nevertheless, when an elderly English professor disappears during a snowy Thanksgiving weekend, no one expects him to turn up dead. Professor Kent's body is found in a snowdrift--very near the home of an English Department colleague and the home of Barnard's Crossing's new rabbi as well. Heart attack? Rabbi Small thinks not, for a man as sublimely self-interested as old Professor Kent must have racked up many a grudge, and worse.

And as usual the rabbi is right. . . .

About this title

About the Author

Harry Kemelman is the author of the hugely popular Rabbi Small mystery series, which includes Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home, Monday the Rabbi Took Off, Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red, Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet, Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross, Someday the Rabbi Will Leave and The Day the Rabbi Resigned. There are almost seven million copies of Rabbi Small mysteries in print.

Harry Kemelman lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

From the Inside Flap

Times Book Review called Harry Kemelman's last Rabbi Small novel, The Day the Rabbi Resigned, "a deft murder mystery. . .very smooth and wonderfully sly." Now, in The Day the Rabbi Left Town, America's most unorthodox detective deserts his old haunts for new challenges. But the more things change the more they stay the same, especially where murder is concerned. . . .

Having resigned as rabbi of Barnard's Crossing Temple, Rabbi David Small is delighted to accept the newly created post of Professor of Judaic Studies at Windermere College in Boston. The position is just what he wanted, even though the English faculty, with whom he is temporarily domiciled, appears oddly unsettled by his presence.

Nevertheless, when an elderly English professor disappears during a snowy Thanksgiving weekend, no one expects him to turn up dead. Professor Kent's body is found in a snowdrift--very near the home of an English Department colleague and the home of Barnard's Crossing's new r

Reviews

Rabbi David Small, after 25 years at the Barnard's Crossing Temple, resigns in order to launch a Judaic studies department at Windermere College in Boston. Happily, Kemelman hasn't resigned from his engaging, skillfully plotted mysteries (Friday the Rabbi Slept Late; Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry). In this one, the temple board duly hires a new rabbi. He jogs! In shorts! His wife is a lawyer! And he eventually becomes a suspect in a murder that links village and city as surely as do the snowy Boston and state roads. A fierce Thanksgiving storm figures heavily here-affecting people's movements and their cars, and delivering up a corpse in a snowbank. The victim's identity is not a surprise; nor is the killer's, but reasoning out the intricate means and motive calls for the rabbi's trademark pilpul. Vintage Kemelman-clean prose, quiet wit, absorbing characters and revealing conversations, with David's discourses on Judaism as fascinating as ever.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The big news is that since leaving his suburban congregation (The Day the Rabbi Resigned, 1992, etc.), Rabbi David Small has landed another job. His new post as Professor of Judaica at Boston's Windermere College gives Kemelman license to indulge his disdain (never far beneath the surface in his Nicky Welt stories and elsewhere) for the most obvious types of academic snobbery and vacuity. Here, the main beneficiary of his satiric gaze is Prof. Malcolm Kent (n‚ Mike Canty), m‚diocrit‚ grise of Windermere's English department. Besides not knowing his right hand from his left, Kent is a groper (of his junior colleague Sarah McBride), a platonic adulterer (with his longtime manicurist, Lorraine Bixby), a Peeping Tom (on Susan Selig, Esq.), and, once dead, a confounded nuisance: His corpse has the temerity to get found in almost exactly the spot that Dana Selig, the new rabbi, had promised to toss him after his wife caught the savant at her window. It's this last twist, of course, that brings Rabbi Small into the case, where he operates as colorlessly and effectively as you'd expect. A feast of understatement--though Windermere College, where an unlettered dolt can wangle tenure for a colleague with a few well- placed words, seems to be operating out of a time warp. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kemelman began his "Rabbi" series with Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964). Now, with seven million books in the series in print, comes this latest installment in which the venerable Rabbi Small investigates the death of an English professor.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kemelman's warm-and-fuzzy Rabbi Small mysteries are the American equivalent of the British cozy. In his latest adventure, the rabbi retires from the synagogue and accepts a teaching job at nearby Windermere College. But even a career change can't keep the rabbi away from dead bodies, though this one doesn't turn up until the last third of the book. The first two-thirds are filled with fascinating descriptions of the history, customs, and practices of Judaism (thinly disguised as the rabbi's lectures to his students) and a gentle but revealing exposeof the pettiness and pretensions of academic life. When the murder finally does occur, it's somewhat anticlimactic, and even the assorted red herrings and odd suspects don't add much excitement. So if it's not suspense, what makes this mystery--and indeed, the whole series--so appealing? It must have something to do with the stories' charm, the rabbi's wisdom, and the heartwarming picture of the Jewish community that Kemelman offers. Sprightly, light, and entertaining. Emily Melton

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0449910024
• ISBN 13: 9780449910023
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245