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

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)

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

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

Six clever, wonderfully writen "Black Widower" mysteries penned by the award-winning science fiction writer reveal the inner workings of a mind that was capable of crossing genres easily to produce some of the best mystery writing on the market. Reprint.