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Title: Banquets of the Black
Widowers
Series: The Black Widowers #4
Authors:
Isaac Asimov
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Mystery
Pages: 153
Words:
72K
Publish: 1984
Asimov shakes things up, just a little, by having the club members either break rules or do something completely out of the ordinary here. Not for every story, but enough. It would be like if Rex Stout had his character Nero Wolfe actually leave his house (which while Wolfe states that he won’t leave his house, his actions give the lie to that more often than not, sigh). It shook things up as the routine was broken and that was a good thing. The bickering and outright fighting amongst the members is really getting on my nerves. I’ve got one more book of these to read and then I’ll have finished the series.
I think my favorite story this time around was “The Driver” about a bunch of egghead scientists and a SETI convention and some low IQ driver getting killed. Turns out the driver was pretending and he was a Soviet spy and he let slip one bit of info that would have given him away, so his Soviet Masters had him done away with. It might have been a Cold War, but nobody was phutzing around, that was for sure.
Several of the other stories all revolve around human nature, as Asimov perceived it. I don’t see eye to eye with him on that issue all the time so those stories fell really flat for me. They also irritated me because they involved people being really stupid and even when I think that people ARE stupid, doesn’t mean I want to read about it. I mean, you like being healthy right? So do you want to read stories about weeping, suppurating boils and sores, oozing pus? Yeah, me neither.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
"Introduction"
"Sixty Million Trillion Combinations" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 5 May 1980) – A paranoid mathematician who suspects that his work on Goldbach's conjecture has been stolen. When the authorities demand his cooperation, he sulkily gives a clue to the code which protects his work on a shared computer, suspecting that no one could possibly guess or deduce the code. Fortunately for the agencies who need this information, the Black Widowers are able to come up with the code, purely because one member shares a trait with the mathematician.
"The Woman in the Bar" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 30 June 1980) – the Black Widowers have as their dinner guest Darius Just, the main character from Asimov's mystery novel Murder at the ABA. Darius finds himself in danger of violent reprisals when he tries to help a frightened woman (he knows she is frightened, but he can have no idea by whom or why). She has given him crucial nonverbal communication clues which the Black Widowers solve. Asimov states that he "thought up" this Black Widowers story just for this character.[4]
"The Driver" – the Black Widowers consider the mysterious death of a chauffeur at a SETI Institute conference.
"The Good Samaritan" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 10 September 1980) – in a controversial break with tradition, a woman is invited to attend the men-only club.
"The Year of the Action" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 1 January 1981) – a historical clue is solved about a comic opera, "The Pirates of Penzance," by Gilbert and Sullivan.
"Can You Prove It?" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 17 June 1981) – the guest describes his arrest and interrogation behind the Iron Curtain and is unable to explain why he was released.
"The Phoenician Bauble" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1982) – a valuable archaeological artefact has been lost.
"A Monday in April" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1983) – concerns a matter of trivia about ancient Rome. The evenings guest feels that his girlfriend cheated in a competition, but Henry's solution casts doubt on that presumption.
"Neither Brute Nor Human" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, April 1984) – the story requires solving a riddle about a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
"The Redhead" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1984) – a woman disappears into thin air.
"The Wrong House" – the guest is unable to determine which of his neighbours has been counterfeiting money after witnessing their operation while drunk.
"The Intrusion" – an uninvited guest crashes the party and asks the Black Widowers for help in finding the man who took advantage of his developmentally challenged sister.
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