I’ve just completed a reread of the first four mysteries in this series, which I haven’t read since my teens! The entire series is now available in ebook, which is probably a good thing, since I suspect the print books are now only available on eBay or ABEBooks. Having them under one cover was convenient for me. They are named for days of the week, and after that there are still a few more titles.
David Small is the young rabbi of a Conservative Jewish congregation in Barnard’s Crossing, a small New England town. He is the son and grandson of rabbis and wants to be just like his father and grandfather. He is endearingly scruffy. In every single one of these books, he has a quarrel with the board of directors of his synagogue - different people in each one, as they are appointed yearly, but all of them working hard to make his life difficult. He has firm beliefs and he won’t compromise on them, or do anything he regards as hypocritical. That doesn’t make him popular with them, but interestingly the youngsters like him, not because he plays the guitar or tries to be cool - he doesn’t - but because he doesn’t talk down to them and is always honest with them.
Rabbi Small is the amateur sleuth of this series of cosies. These heroes tend to have a cop buddy; David Small’s cop buddy is the local police chief, Hugh Lanigan. Having a non Jewish friend gives him the excuse to explain the Jewish attitude to various things.
His wife, Miriam, sometimes wishes he would compromise on some things, but loves and supports him anyway. What she doesn’t do is participate in the solving of the mysteries, except, in one book, supplying some vital information that helps the men solve it.
And that’s the thing: they are nice, gentle stories, and after all these years I still like David Small, who uses the logic he has acquired from years of studying and arguing Jewish laws to solve murders, as well as his own powers of observation. But they are somewhat dated. Written in the 1960s and early 1970s, it shows men ruling the roost and their wives doing the domestic work. The temple board is made up entirely of men and women can’t even vote for it, though they do various ladies’ auxiliary type activities. It is mentioned that at other synagogues that is not the case.
In the fourth book, Monday The Rabbi Took Off, in which David and Miriam go to Israel for three months, Miriam’s efficient aunt Gittel is a social worker, who knows everyone and organises everything, but she is a widow with a grown son. There is no man in her life to look after. At one point, Gittel tells off a male friend who has let the house get messy while his wife is in hospital, but tidies it herself instead of making him do it. Miriam takes a (volunteer) job at the hospital and the Smalls’ young son goes to kindergarten, and Miriam still does all the cooking and cleaning while our crime-solving hero spends his days wandering around Jerusalem and stopping for coffee at little cafes. Just as well there is a murder for him to solve!
I suppose you can always think of them as historical fiction.
They are worth reading for the small town, small community politics, and while the mysteries are usually solved very late in the book, the rabbi’s logic does make sense.
If you like cosies and don’t mind when they were written, this series is worth a read.
Is there a book or series you have reread after many years? How did you feel about it?
8 comments:
These books sound interesting and lively. It seems like they were just a reflection of the time in regards to gender. What can be glaring is science fiction written in the past that carries the sexism into a supposedly future society.
Very true, Brian! I’ve read many of those, some by well known authors(naming no names here). Only recently I read a story on my slushpile, set in the far future and not a single female crew member on the exploration spaceship! I rejected it for a number of reasons, but that was one.
As I read your post I was wondering about them being dated - and then you answered my question. There is such a difference between reading an "old" book or a contemporary written historical.
Do you think you enjoyed them because you have that childhood memory? Or because they really stand their own? I puzzle on this a lot, especially because of deciding what books to pass to my Barbarians to read. This doesn't sound like one I'd want to pass over.
Hi Anita! I suspect your Barbarians would not enjoy it, though you might. There are a lot of books that simply reflect their time and we read them anyway, if with gritted teeth. I have been disappointed in many books I loved as a child, and in the case of these ones my disappointment lies in the datedness, not the stories themselves.
If anyone thinks that a religious leader would make a crappy sleuth, they may not be prepared to take seriously the mysteries in this series.
But then I saw all the Father Brown tv programmes and thought they handled the religious-secular differences beautifully. Do you think Kemelman was going for a market of children, teens or adult readers?
Father Brown is a delight! So is Brother Cadfael.
Rabbi Small would probably deny being a religious leader and has, a number of times in the series. He says that any thirteen year old boy can lead prayers. A lot of each book is him having an argument with the powers that be and threatening to leave. No, not for kids. I happened to discover them when
I was a teen.
Georgette Heyer's gender politics is so old fashioned and yet her prose sparkles and her story lines are wonderful fun and I read and re-read them (although my feminist mother was mortified) She too was a creature of her times. But a lovely wordsmith and a big influence.
Hi Jane! Yes, Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances were a delight. The difference is that they were set in an earlier time, whereas the Rabbi Small mysteries were contemporary when they were written. However, I have never gone back to The Grand Sophy due to some antisemitism, and that was a product of Heyer’s own time.
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