The Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov for a series of sixty-six mystery stories that he started writing in 1971.
"[1] Most of the stories follow the same basic convention: the six club members meet once a month at a private room at the Milano restaurant at Fifth and Eighteenth in New York.
The room includes sketches of the guests drawn by Black Widower Mario Gonzalo and a bookcase with an encyclopaedia that is often consulted.
[5] Asimov uses the stories in order to delve into aspects of science, history, culture and other interests: for example, Goldbach's conjecture in "Sixty Million Trillion Combinations"; Gilbert and Sullivan in "The Year of the Action"; and the origins of the name "Susan" in "The Intrusion".
One is "The Overheard Conversation" by Edward D. Hoch, which appears in the festschrift anthology Foundation's Friends (1989); another is "The Last Story", by Charles Ardai, in The Return of the Black Widowers (2003).