The Singer Not the Song is a 1953 novel by British writer Audrey Erskine Lindop. The book was published in the UK by The Reprint Society, a British book club founded in 1939. The American edition of the book was titled The Bandit and the Priest.
The novel is a character-driven thriller that is set in a small, isolated village in the mountains of Mexico named Quantana. The story centers on a young priest, Father Keogh, who is sent to the village and finds himself in a moral battle with a young bandit named Malo, who controls the town and its people.
The book was adapted into a 1961 film of the same name, starring Dirk Bogarde and John Mills.