Casebook of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov

(The griller, learning this, says that 'you can have no friends here, or possibly anywhere.') His recollection for the evening is of a fraudster who managed, apparently quite innocently, to mislead him about his identity by giving the impression of being a family man when speaking of holidays. 'The Family Man') The evening's guest initially casts a pall over the banquet by revealing that he's employed by the IRS. But a young French fellow-passenger could offer only one clue as to her destination. Larri wants to make a lady reappear: Gwendolyn, whom he met on a long bus ride. (However, Larri's discourse on psychics is only the prologue to his problem for a story concentrating on psychics, see _Tales of the Black Widowers_). Guest: the Amazing Larri, a stage magician with a sideline in exposing psychic fraudsters.

(Problem-solving isn't the point of the club Avalon, for one, grumbles about how the grilling always seems to degenerate into sleuthing, lately.) The seventh Widower - Henry, the waiter - always produces the solution after the other six have batted the problem around awhile.

They rotate the office of host each month's host brings a guest for an evening of dinner, conversation, and grilling, and each eventually produces a problem of some kind for the Widowers to try to solve. The Widowers are a stag club who meet once a month at the Milano restaurant: Avalon (patent attorney), Drake (research chemist), Gonzalo (painter), Halsted (teacher), Rubin (author), and Trumbull (intelligence analyst). Briefly, Asimov wrote Black Widower short stories for _Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine_ for years, rounding out each batch to a dozen with a few previously unpublished episodes for each new Widower collection.

Casebook of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov