The small Massachusetts village of Barnard’s Crossing is shaken when the body of a young woman is found lying behind a garden wall, and no one more than Rabbi David Small — because the woman’s purse was in his car, parked nearby at the Temple where he’d been appreciating some new books. Naturally the police have questions, and so do the members of the rabbi’s congregation, who were preparing to review their new rabbi’s contract for the next year. Fortunately, this is a small town: personalities are largely known, as are potential motives — and if they’re not obvious, they can be sussed out. Both for professional and personal reasons, the rabbi puts his powers of discernment and argument to work, using his rapport with the police chief to help figure out the truth. Friday the Rabbi Slept Late is a village mystery, run by connection, conversation, and petty motives — but is made all the more interesting by the seriousness with which Jewish wisdom and Talmudic argument is brought to bear. As a fan of village stories (the Mitford series, Berry’s Port Williams books, even John Grisham’s Clanton tales), this was right up my alley, especially given the apparent similarity between this and GKC’s Father Brown mysteries. Although the books presume some basic familiarity with Judaism from the reader, they also appear to be written for a non-Jewish audience, as Small frequently has to explain differences between Jewish religious culture (particularly, the role of a rabbi) and Catholic and Protestant culture. These range from the trivial (“Rabbis aren’t Catholic, we can marry”) to the more serious, like discussions about virtue and theodicy. The book is very much a product of the early sixties, from the constant smoking to the casual use of ‘broads’ to describe women. Some of the men are such overt pigs that I suspect Kemelman was writing to mock them. The reader can solve the mystery, since it’s based not on forensics but on human nature — I’d pinned the culprit early on, but wasn’t sure of the exact chain of events that lead to the crime. This was a delightful little discovery for me, and I’ll continue the series as I progress more on Mount TBR.

Some higlights:

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is it a private argument, or can anyone join? I’ll bet they could hear you guys down the block.”

“Dear Mrs. Small, I’m not disagreeing with you. But we live in the world. This is what the world wants now in a rabbi, so this is what a rabbi has to be.”
“David will change the world, Mr. Wasserman, before the world will change my David.”

“Then why bother to be good?” asked Mrs. Lanigan.
“Because virtue really does carry its own reward and evil its own punishment. Because evil is always essentially small and petty and mean and depraved, and in a limited life it represents a portion wasted, misused, and that can never be regained.”