Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

Friday the Rabbi Slept Late is a mystery novel by the American writer Harry Kemelman, published in 1964. It is the first book of his Rabbi Small series, and it won the Edgar Award.

David Small is the leader of a Conservative Jewish congregation in the fictional suburban town of Barnard's Crossing, Massachusetts. He is unconventional, and part of what makes him so is that his sense of Jewish tradition rarely fails him, which sometimes puts him at odds with his own community when he thinks they are seriously departing from it.

Small usually gets drawn into events when they involve a member of his congregation or of the town's Jewish community, and he is constantly at odds with at least one powerful figure at the temple, usually whoever is president at the time. The local police chief is Hugh Lanigan, who is a Catholic, and the two men become friends and often discuss religion over a cup of tea. The novel begins with the discovery of the body of a young woman on the temple grounds, and it is Small's reasoning, learned from the Talmud, that turns out to matter most.