History Literature / BlackWidowers

* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: In "The Old Purse", a woman had her old, unconspicuous purse stolen from her, and then all its contents brought to her home, minus the purse. [[spoiler:It was stolen by terrorists who wanted an unconspicuous container for a planted bomb.]]

** In "To The Barest", the founder of the Black Widowers, Ralph Ottur, dies and leaves a will requiring them to solve a pun riddle. They must determine which of them is the "barest", and that person gets $10,000. If they fail, the money will go to the American Nazi Party. The kicker here is that Ralph Ottur ''hated'' the American Nazi Party. He picked them as the next-in-line heir to make sure the living Black Widowers put enough effort into solving the riddle.
** In "The One And Only East", the members have to help a friend whose eccentric uncle required him to solve a riddle in order to receive an inheritance. If he fails, the fortune will go to charities that the uncle knows his straitlaced nephew will disapprove of.

** In "The Acquisitive Chuckle", Mr Bartram has gone over the crime scene with a fine-toothed comb, and has given up on solving the mystery before coming to the Black Widower's club meeting for help. {{Subverted|Trope}} because he doesn't really believe they can solve the mystery, [[spoiler:he came to ask the thief for the solution directly, since the thief can no longer be prosecuted]].
** In "Ph As In Phony", Henry is able to deduce the mystery of Faron's cheating by figuring out how Faron could create the test rather than stealing the test.

* PricelessPaperweight: In "The Iron Gem", a person is puzzled about why someone offered him five hundred for an old family heirloom - an iron meteorite - and then never made another offer or even tried to contact him. It turns out [[spoiler:the man managed to distract the owner and walk away with the original package - which had a stamp on it. And since the package dated from 1856, a stamp from that time would be valuable indeed.]]

** In "To The Barest". When Ralph Ottur (the founder of the Black Widowers club) dies, he leaves a will which requires the members to solve a riddle in order for one of the members to receive a bequest. To raise the stakes, if the riddle wasn't solved, the money would go to the American Nazi Party.
** In "The One And Only East", the members have to help a friend whose eccentric uncle required him to solve a riddle in order to receive an inheritance. If he fails, the fortune will go to charities that the uncle knows his straitlaced nephew will disapprove of.

** The guest in "Truth To Tell" has a reputation for never telling a lie; not even white lies told for social convenience. This makes his ExactWords the key to solving the mystery.

* SpottingTheThread: "Earthset and Evening Star" is about a man whose wife joined a sect promising spiritual reincarnation on Mars. They call themselves the Tri-Luciferians, referring to the fact that while Earth has two morning stars (the original meaning of "Lucifer"), namely, Mercury and Venus, Mars has Earth as a morning star as well. The wife is reasonable enough, however, to leave the sect if someone will point out a logical impossibility in the teachings of the sect. The logical place to look would be the descriptions of Mars, but the leader is careful not to give too much detail, and what he does give is consistent with the current scientific knowledge. Finally, it is pointed out that [[spoiler:Mars would not have ''three'' morning stars. It would have ''four'', since the Moon would be both too bright to miss, and far enough from Earth to be seen as a separate object.]]

** In "The Sports Page", the guest relates the tale of a Russian spy (that is, a Russian national working for the West) who left a dying message that nobody had been able to interpret: the letters E P O C K from a Scrabble set. No useful anagram could be found, so the spy's intention had been a mystery for more than twenty years. As always, Henry the waiter solves it, pointing out that the letters ''could'' be meaningfully rearranged [[spoiler:to form 'CKOPE', which in the Cyrillic alphabet spells the word 'score'. This, along with a newspaper opened at the sports page (the ''scores'', gettit?) implied that the agent was trying to communicate the number twenty. The Widowers' guest is thunderstruck at this -- in the code they used at the time, '20' meant "Government in firm control" and if they had known this, the Bay of Pigs invasion could have been called off]].

* OrphanedSeries: The series was probably expected to continue indefinitely, when [[AuthorExistenceFailure Dr Asimov's death]] ended it early. To [[SubvertedTrope subvert this trope]], the Asimov Estate gave Charles Ardai permission to edit a satisfying conclusion to the series.

* CaptainObviousReveal: The solution to "Nothing Like Murder" is much less surprising after 2001.

* PricelessPaperweight: In "The Iron Gem", a person is puzzled about why someone offered him five hundred for an old family heirloom - an iron meteorite - and then never made another offer or even tried to contact him. It turns out [[spoiler:The man managed to distract the owner and walk away with the original package - which had a stamp on it. And since the package dated from 1856, a stamp from that time would be valuable indeed.]]

* PricelessPaperweght: In "The Iron Gem", a person is puzzled about why someone offered him five hundred for an old family heirloom - an iron meteorite - and then never made another offer or even tried to contact him. It turns out [[spoiler:The man managed to distract the owner and walk away with the original package - which had a stamp on it. And since the package dated from 1856, a stamp from that time would be valuable indeed.]]

* OrphanedSeries: The series was probably expected to continue indefinitely, when [[AuthorExistenceFailure Dr Asimov's death]] ended it early. To [[SubvertedTrope subvert this trope]], the Asimov Estate gave Charles Ardai permission to edit a satisfying conclusion to the series.