TALES OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS

These appealing five-finger exercises all involve meetings of a misogynistic secret society, the Black Widowers, who foregather monthly at a restaurant to eat good food and to quiz a single nonmember guest on his profession, interests and vagaries. Mirabile dictu the quizzing always elicits a riddle — the source of the mysterious banging noises plaguing a writer, the location of hidden bonds or how a clairvoyant does her trick, for example — to which the club can turn its collective puzzle-solving talents; however, it's always Henry the waiter who provides the solution. As insubstantial as cotton candy and as sweet.