The Return of the Black Widowers

Being an avid fan of Issac Asimov my whole life, I have read many to most of his fictional works including the casebooks of the Black Widowers. But this particular edition and its highly intense forward by the Doctor's dear friend is the best mystery collection by far. Any Issac Asimov fan will love it as much as I do and any reader of the genre will be highly gratified by the intelligence and plot twists the dear Doctor ingeniously supplies in his stories.

The drill with Asimov's Black Widower mysteries (in music circles, one might call these "divertimenti") is well known to dedicated fans. Six members of the Black Widowers Club (chauvinists one and all, "no women allowed", if you puhhlease!) meet once a month at their club for a gourmet dinner. The members of the group - a lawyer, a cryptographer, a math teacher, a chemist, a mystery writer, and Henry, their inestimable waiter - never fail to ferret out an interesting mystery, theft, disappearance, swindle or some other form of interesting puzzle during the grilling of their dinner guest which invariably starts with the formula question "How do you justify your existence?" Despite the collective intelligence of the group (which Asimov humorously portrays them as being inordinately proud of), the solution of the puzzle always seems just beyond their grasp. Henry, in a quiet, self-effacing manner that doesn't quite succeed in covering his own serving of pride, comes to the rescue with the solution and the explanations for the other members and readers alike! Readers of previous Black Widower shorts will be thrilled to return to the publication of this posthumous "best of" collection plus a handful of previously unpublished works by the good doctor! Cynicism, word play, jokes, puns, locked room mysteries, irony, sarcasm and other quiet diversions take centre stage. Don't look for violence, mayhem or thrills in this collection. They're just not there. Almost certainly, readers will twig to some of the solutions before Henry provides the answers and those brighter armchair sleuths will undoubtedly indulge in a little chuckling at the expense of the members. Other times, Henry's explanation will result in the proverbial slap in the forehead - "Now why didn't I think of that!" In either event, every story in the collection will provide ten to fifteen minutes of thoroughly enjoyable diversion from this hectic work-a-day world and a satisfied smile at its conclusion. Give yourself a treat and add some of Asimov's gentle humour to your bookshelf.

As a fan of Isaac Asimov, and of his Black Widower stories, I was delighted to read this book. Here you have a selection of ten of the best Black Widower stories ( a good selection, though I'd have included "Earthset and Evening Star". But there are many I consider the best, "Early Sunday Morning" and "The Wrong House" among them); there are also six uncollected BW stories,of which "Lost in a Time Warp" is one of the better examples of Asimov's sense of humour, very like "The Redhead", also included in the volume. At the end we have a commmemorative Black Widowerstory written by Ardai, a very clever homage to the Good Doctor.It's a book well worth having, not only for Asimov's fans, but for the mystery/puzzle stories' readers, also.

This review from BOOKLIST used to be on this page, but somehow disappeared. For those who missed it...*Starred Review* Ah, there's nothing like a Harlan Ellison rant to add some spice to a short story collection, and he delivers a beaut in the form of an introduction to this collection of the late Asimov's Black Widower stories, one of the incredibly prolific author's relatively rare ventures into the mystery genre. Asimov wrote 66 Black Widower tales in all, from 1970 until his death in 1992, and this collection brings together 6 never published in book form in addition to the editor's selection of the 10 best. Each story is framed by a meeting of the Black Widower Club, at which the members, armchair detectives all, are treated to a gourmet dinner and then, for dessert, tested with a classic puzzle mystery. The mysteries tend to be gentle and ironic, solved by deduction instead of mayhem--and explained for the slow of mind by the inimitable waiter Henry. For fans of puzzle mysteries, this one's a gem, from a kinder, gentler era. (What does Ellison rant about? Mostly the book's editor, Ardai.) Elliott SwansonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Everyone knows Isaac Asimov as one of the all-time great science fiction writers, but what a lot of people don't know is that he also wrote wonderful mystery stories. The best were about a club called "The Black Widowers," and this new book collects the ten best of the Black Widowers stories, plus six "lost" Black Widowers stories that never appeared in any Black Widowers collection before. Plus two extra tribute stories by other authors, an introduction by Harlan Ellison, a Black Widowers story Asimov wrote featuring a character based on Ellison, and an essay by Asimov explaining how he came to write these stories in the first place. It's a terrific book, a real treat for any fan of the Good Doctor or of brilliant mysteries.