That Day the Rabbi Left Town

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. . . .