Tales of the Black Widowers is a 1974 collection of mystery

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

 short stories written by American author Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...

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This book is the first of six books that describe mysteries solved by a private men's club known as the Black Widowers

Black Widowers

The Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov for a series of sixty-six mystery stories which he started writing in 1971...

. It is a collection of short stories, and is a "straight" mystery containing no science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia

Trivia

The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...

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Contents

• "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"

External links

• "Tales of the Black Widowers" - a book review by John H. Jenkins