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That Day the Rabbi Left Town [Mass Market Paperback]

Harry Kemelman (Author)
2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)


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Book Description

July 13, 1998
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. . . .


From the Hardcover edition.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback
  • Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (July 13, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0517315483
  • ISBN-13: 978-0517315484
  • Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,834,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
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4 star:
 (5)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
2.6 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars This Rabbi Draws No Small Audience!, January 13, 2001
Harry Kemelman's Rabbi David Small is once again gainfully employed! Following his earlier resignation in "The Day the Rabbi Resigned," Small is now teaching at Windermere College--a good, if not proper for him, academic setting. In "That Day the Rabbi Left Town," it seems, having run out of days of the week (remember, this series started with "Friday the Rabbi Slept Late," Kemelman has been creative with working in other diurnal references in his title. That aside, of course, the series has been a fun read. In this one, the death of an elderly colleague gets Rabbi Small into the heart of the action, as it were. Of course, in his new setting he quickly stumbles into all kinds of academic and campus politics, grudges, and jealousies, to say the least. This episode seems a bit different, however, as Kemelman goes didactic and spends a good third of the book giving us perhaps more background, history, and practices of his religion. Readers may find this a struggle, particularly if they are in a hurry to get into the real case! Once that occurs, however, Kemelman cruises.(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Retirement, January 24, 2006
By 
Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
Rabbi Small, now in his fifties, is to teach a Judaic course at Windermere College. He is supposed to be available to the history and philosophy departments. He is retiring from serving as rabbi of the temple at Barnard's Crossing. His stay in the position at Barnard's Crossing was of twenty-five years' duration. The temple board, through the Ritual Committee, is to seek a new rabbi.

Miller and Jacobs of the English Department at Windermere College work out together in the college gymnasium. They are characters in the drama. At the hail and farewell brunch for Rabbi Small and his successor, Rabbi Selig, more people speak with Selig than with Small, understandably. The Seligs have dinner with Rabbi Small and his wife, Miriam, a few days later. Professor Miller of Windermere is now a neighbor of the new rabbi. At Kenmore Station Rabbi Small runs into Mordecai Jacobs. At his college office Small meets Sarah McBride, also of the English Department. She intends to audit his course since her husband is Jewish, she explains.

Malcolm Kent, now an old man, fell into teaching at Windermere. He also fell into marriage with Mathilda Clark, the last member of the Clark family, one of the founding families of the school. Malcolm has lied about his credentials. Malcolm decides to give a loan to a former girl friend to help her set up a beauty parlor with her future husband. She is pregnant and plans to marry to the relief of Kent. Malcolm is lonely after his wife dies. He really has no friends at the college.

Rabbi Small is disturbed by noise, such as that of power lawn mowers, and determines that it would help matters for Selig if the Smalls moved to Boston for the winter. A sublet at Coolidge Corner is arranged. The mystery begins as a blizzard blankets the Boston area with snow over the Thanksgiving holiday and many of the characters change their transportation arrangements. The homicide in the story concerns Malcolm Kent. Eventually Rabbi Small suggests a solution, identifying the murderer, showing that one faker had used another.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Another book for Rabbi Small fans, March 16, 1997
By A Customer
If you are like me and read all of previous Rabbi Small books, you will be happy that there's another one. Though this wasn't as fun as the others, it was still an enjoyable reading.

If you have never read Rabbi Small mystery before, I strongly suggest that you start with his first book. This way you can truly enjoy his books. I got hooked and I had to read every book he wrote
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