The Day the Rabbi Resigned - Softcover

Harry Kemelman

3.89

953 ratings by Goodreads

9780727850300: The Day the Rabbi Resigned

Softcover

ISBN 10: 072785030X ISBN 13: 9780727850300

Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd, 1993

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Rabbi Small, bored with his clerical duties, is enlisted by Police Chief Hugh Lanigan to set his scholar's mind to a drunk-driving accident that looks like murder. Victor Joyce, a local college professor infamous both for his ambition and extracurricular activities, had been drinking heavily the night of the crash. But a witness who passed by the wreck insists that the victim was not dead, just unconscious. Rabbi Small learns that quite a number of "innocent" citizens drove down the seldom-used road on that rainy night. Any one of them could have had it in for the not-so-revered professor . . .

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews:

After nine previous novels, it's no wonder Rabbi David Small has had it with the fractious congregation at Barnard's Crossing, Massachusetts, and is looking for another line of work. First, though, there's one minor distraction: the death of tenure-hungry Victor Joyce of Windermere Christian College, apparently killed in a drunk-driving accident, but actually murdered sometime after Dr. Abner Gorfinkle examined the wreck and pronounced him alive. Will the rabbi be able to talk Chief Hugh Lanigan out of fingering the police suspect-- upstanding Mordecai Jacobs, Joyce's competition for tenure at Windermere--and sort out the untidy subplots to finger the obvious killer in time to tender his resignation? Is the Pope Polish? Sketchy work from a pro who, like his hero, seems to have his mind on something else all through the book. The murder mystery is less interesting, presumably by design, than the question of what's next in store for the rabbi. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal:

YA-- A revealing conversation between Rabbi Small and his wife at the beginning of the book invites readers right into their thoughts and feelings and gives a direction as to the man's future plans to teach in a college. Through little twists and turns in each succeeding chapter, the story becomes more complicated. The Rabbi himself seems incidental to the main plot well into the middle of the book, but it is actually he who puts his logical ``Talmudic'' mind to work to help solve the mystery of who has murdered Victor Joyce, college professor and husband of a devout Catholic. Many people have motives, and all, for a time, are suspects to Lanigan, Police Chief of sleepy little (but now wide awake) Barnard's Crossing. A convoluted, sometimes humorous mystery that makes for entertaining reading.
-Bunni Union, Geauga West Lib . ,
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.