The Black Widowers

Series · 4 books · 1974-1984

By Isaac Asimov

Books in series

Tales of the Black Widowers

1974

There were six of them. Professional men and their waiter. They gather at the Milano Restaurant once a month for good food and good conversation. But lately the Black Widowers have added a new entertainment to their meetings. They have begun to solve mysteries, murders, and conspiracies of seemingly impossible dimensions.With all the skills of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot combined, these six men and their ever-faithful waiter, Henry, take on challenging cases that will tease your deductive skills to the limit and keep you guessing to the very end.\ The Acquisitive Chuckle\ Ph as in Phony\ Truth to Tell\ Go, Little Book!\ Early Sunday Morning\ The Obvious Factor\ The Pointing Finger\ Miss What?\ The Lullaby of Broadway\ Yankee Doodle Went to Town\ The Curious Omission\ Out of Sight

Largo ai vedovi neri

1976

I Vedovi Neri è un club immaginario creato da Isaac Asimov per una serie di brevi racconti gialli che egli iniziò a scrivere dal 1971. La maggior parte dei racconti furono pubblicati nell’Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I racconti seguono sempre la stessa convenzione: i sei membri del club ed un ospite si riuniscono a cena, serviti dall’incomparabile cameriere Henry Jackson, anche lui membro onorario dei Vedovi Neri. Durante la cena l’ospite propone sempre un mistero che i membri del club provano a risolvere, ma solo Henry vede la corretta (e di solito molto semplice) soluzione. Contiene 1 Non c'è chi lo perseguit (When No Man Pursueth) 2 Più veloce dell'occhio (Quicker Than the Eye) 3 La gemma di ferro (The Iron Gem) 4 I tre numeri (The Three Numbers) 5 Mancato assassinio (Nothing Like Murder) 6 Vietato fumare (No Smoking)

Casebook of the Black Widowers

1980

Every month, the Black Widowers convene for sumptuous food, fine wine, and a cosmically baffling mystery. Attended by Henry, the all-knowing waiter, these gentle rogues ponder such imponderables as: \* the one-syllable middle name that represents what every schoolboy knows, yet doesn't... \* a murder by solar eclipse very far out in space... \* a Soviet spy's dying message utilizing a Scrabble set and a newspaper sports page... \* a satanic cult leader's Martian connection... \* a computer criminal's strange equation of Christmas and Halloween... \* an ancient symbol that provides the key to a woman's mysterious disappearance... Contents: 1\. The Cross of Lorraine 2\. The Family Man 3\. The Sports Page 4\. Second Best 5\. The Missing Item 6\. The Next Day 7\. Irrelevance! 8\. None So Blind 9\. The Backward Look 10\. What Time Is It? 11\. Middle Name 12\. To the Barest

Banquets of the Black Widowers

1984

This book is the fourth of six that describe mysteries solved by the Black Widowers, based on a literary dining club he belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders. It collects twelve stories by Asimov, together with a general introduction and an afterword following each story by the author. Nine of the stories were previously published; "The Driver," "The Wrong House" and "The Intrusion" are new to this collection. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia. Nearly every story here is about decoding a riddle, each of which provides a clue based on dying or last words, misunderstood words, forgotten words, or withheld words. A few are based on facts that are, perhaps, not generally known to the public – Asimov was a frequent writer of popular science and his inclination to explain anything and everything for the general public carried over into other fields, such as history and sociology – but all the mysteries play fair with the reader, who is given either enough information to figure out the solution or a satisfying conclusion that is based on previously given facts and personality qualities. Contents 1\. Introduction 2\. Sixty Million Trillion Combinations 3\. The Woman in the Bar 4\. The Driver 5\. The Good Samaritan 6\. The Year of the Action 7\. Can You Prove It? 8\. The Phoenician Bauble 9\. A Monday in April 10\. Neither Brute Nor Human 11\. The Redhead 12\. The Wrong House 13\. The Intrusion

Author

Isaac Asimov

Author · 411 books

Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born, American author, a professor of biochemistry, and a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Professor Asimov is generally considered one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He has works published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (lacking only an entry in the 100s category of Philosophy). Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series, both of which he later tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He penned numerous short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time, a title many still honor. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of nonfiction. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of Asimov's popularized science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include his Guide to Science, the three volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. Asimov was a long-time member and Vice President of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs" He took more joy in being president of the American Humanist Association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, a Brooklyn, NY elementary school, and two different Isaac Asimov Awards are named in his honor.