Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

The act seemed innocent enough: A purse left behind and an acquaintance takes it so that he can return it. But when the woman is murdered, the man with the purse becomes the prime suspect. Rabbi David Small, a new member and leader of Barnard’s Crossing’s Jewish community, has few friends he can turn to for help. Fortunately, Talmudic logic is a weapon that cuts through all misunderstandings. Rabbi Small must clear his name by helping a skeptical police force to find the real killer. Published in 1964, Harry Kemmelman’s “Friday the Rabbi Slept Late” mystery launched the Rabbi Small mystery series and won an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel. The religious bent of the title caused its success to surprise many. Friday the Rabbi Slept Late kicked off a series of books and television adaptations. Before writing Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late, Harry Kemelman had written a mystery story “The Nine Mile Walk” which is widely considered one of the best mystery stories ever written and is among the most frequently anthologized. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Harry Kemelman has a B.A. from Boston University and an M.A. in English philology from Harvard. Kemelman taught at a number of schools before World War II and during the war, Kemelman worked as a wage administrator for the United States Army Transportation Corps in Boston and later, for the War Assets Administration. It was after that war that Kemelman became a freelance writer and private businessman. He began his writing career by writing short stories for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine featuring New England college professor Nicky Welt, the first of which, "The Nine Mile Walk", is considered a classic. He was the creator of one of the most famous religious sleuths, Rabbi David Small - the key figure in his Rabbi series. SERIES DESCRIPTIONS From classic book to classic film, RosettaBooks has gathered some of most memorable books into film available. The selection is broad ranging and far reaching, with books from classic genre to cult classic to science fiction and horror and a blend of the two creating whole new genres like Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man. Classic works from Vonnegut, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, meet with E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Whether the work is centered in the here and now, in the past, or in some distant and almost unimaginable future, each work is lasting and memorable and award-winning. ABOUT THE SERIES Mystery writer Harry Kemelman brings us his highly engaging "Rabbi" series that are serialized novels that follow the life of a Rabbi and the world with which he has to contend.