El club de los enigmas

by Isaac Asimov

Cuatro hombres se reúnen en la biblioteca del aristocrático club del que son miembros para pasar la tarde. Un miembro del grupo interrumpe de cuando en cuando la modorra provocada por la abundante bebida para fascinar a sus compañeros con relatos de intriga y suspenso que deberán resolver entre todos.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Detective, Suspense, Collections

258 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of puzzle-stories that Asimov wrote as a monthly fiction feature for Gallery magazine from 1980 - '83. Gallery's raison d'etre was to print pictures of attractive young women with no clothing, but there's nothing salacious about the stories, which are rigidly formatted discussions between a group of old men at an aristocratic club. A brainteaser is presented by Griswold, who's been having an after-lunch nap, and the goal is solve the mystery before the answer is explained. Some of them are obvious, some silly and/or impossible, some depend on random bits of obscure knowledge, and some leave the reader slapping their forehead and mumbling, "Of course!" They're mental exercises, much more like word-puzzles than literary mystery stories, but challenging and a lot of fun.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

And so another classic Asimov is read - this time a series of mysteries. These are the classic tales retold format where one of the characters recounts a tale, a suitable mystery that the other characters comment and question on. Then the story stops and the question is posed in such a way that not only do the rest of the characters get to comment but the reader (in this case me) gets to rack my brain to try and figure it all out.

Doing a little research it turns out that these stories were originally written for a monthly magazine publication. The word count and format were fixed so that to make them work they had to fit each month. This does give the stories an episodic feel to them which it obvious considering their heritage however if you are looking for something to dip in and out of this format is perfect.

Now having read some of the black widower books this could be mistaken as a bit of a copy and a imitation, not so as here the original printing brief keeps them sharp and to the point. What is more Asimov himself makes a huge point about short stories and how they are a much misunderstood format which he made great efforts to prove was just as effective at carrying a story as a multi-volume epic. I guess he knew what he was talking about.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 3 out of 5]

All said and done, Asimov is not a mystery writer. I read it during my early twenties, when my adulation of Asimov was at its peak. I guess I would rate this only two stars if I review it now.

[Lorenzo Avenali]

I've just reread the this book (well, its italian translation, see the link below), that I own since 1985, when I was a very young boy. I've always loved almost everything Mr.Asimov wrote, and in these last weeks I decided to reread all the Black Widowers books in a row, and then, when there were no more to open, I turned to the "Gli Enigmi dell'Union Club", and totally enjoyed once more.

This time, though, when reading the author's "Afterword", I noticed he said "I'll write 30 more stories". So I checked my book, and found out that there are only 29.
After some cross check on this page and my index (that made me feel like the code-breaker Griswold!), I found the missing story: "Twelve Years Old".
I read the recap here for this story, and understood why it hasn't been translated: it's too strictly dependant on the english language, and publishing it in italian would have made it too lame, I'm afraid.

Ok, I just wanted to share with you this funny fact :)

http://image.anobii.com/anobi/image_b...

[Chad D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thirty two-thousand-word mysteries. VERY light entertainment. Setups often more satisfying than the solutions, which tend toward the silly. An impoverished man's Jorkens.

[Jules Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology collected the first 30 stories from a monthly series of mystery shorts Asimov wrote for Eric Potter at Gallery magazine. The frame story for the series is a group of four men who sit together at their club. One of their number claims to have a background in intelligence, and has a habit of telling stories about problems he has solved for the police and intelligence services. The problems are typically in the form of lateral thinking puzzles, and Griswold invariably finishes by commenting that the answer was obvious, and waiting for his companions to admit that they can't work it out before giving them the answer (thus also giving the reader a chance to try to work it out before the answer is revealed). With only 2000 words to play with each month, the stories are of necessity fairly pared down and low on characterisation. They're often great fun, and I find it entertaining to watch the ongoing frame story about the narrator and his two friends trying to decide whether Griswold is telling the truth about his past or pulling their legs; but if you don't like bad puns you won't like a fair few of these little mysteries, and some of them have dated badly. [return][return]I enjoyed the collection, though it's more of a book for dipping into occasionally than reading all the way through in one sitting. I find them excellent for when I want something that will occupy me for five or ten minutes without making it difficult for me to put down the book at the end of a chapter. The collection has kept me entertained through more than a few bouts of 3 am insomnia when I wanted something light and short to focus on that I could put down again as soon as I felt sleepy.[return][return]It's not really worth going to a lot of effort to lay hands on a copy, but if one comes your way it's well worth trying a few of the stories.

[Milena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molto divertente, persino geniale. Non tutti gli enigmi sono di equo livello ma sicuramente sono racconti piacevolissimi da leggere.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Isaac Asimov wrote this series of (very) short stories for a magazine over a period of several years. It was apparently a monthly feature, so the stories are of a very specific length and follow a formula. A group of four older men get together at a private club. One of them an old, cantankerous man named Griswold, awakes from his nap and tells a story from his younger days when he worked for some sort of top secret government agency. The stories always include something puzzling or unexplained. The others try to figure the mystery out and fail and then Griswold smugly explains to them the solution.

In many ways, these short mystery stories are a variation on the Black Widower tales. The main differences are that the stories always come from Griswold rather than an outside guest and that they are quite a bit shorter (averaging less than half the length of the BW stories). Also, Griswold is pretty unlikable, whereas Henry the waiter and Renaissance man of the Widowers, is droll, self-deprecating and amusing.

But how are the mysteries? Well, they're all right. As is typical with brain teaser style mystery stories, some of them have pretty obvious solutions that a savvy reader may guess before Griswold gives the answer, whereas others require obscure or arcane knowledge to resolve. On the other hand, Asimov himself was such a polymath that who's to know what he considered obscure? And given that he was working on a deadline and had to crank one of these out every 30 days, he didn't do badly.

Still, it won't be among my favorite Asimov books, nor even among my favorite Asimov mysteries. It's just a little too formulaic and forgettable. The fact that I can't remember any one of the stories distinctly only a few weeks after completing this is probably a bad sign.

[Malcolmaffleck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was actually quite interested by the format of this book - a collection of mysteries that you had to try and solve - until I actually began and realised the 'mysteries' were actually little more than window dressing for games based on word play, random facts and mathematical conundrums. For example, one of the very first mysteries requires a knowledge of 'The Star Spangled Banner' whilst others require knowledge of mathematical sequences. However, you do pick up a couple of interesting facts along the way and there is a fairly nice framing device that is actually more interesting than the puzzles themselves!

[Josef Constantine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to give up on this one after a handful of stories. They didn't do anything for me and I just couldn't bear reading an entire anthology of them.

The "mysteries" themselves are rather boring and just didn't grab me in any way. Griswold tells a tale about a rather bland mystery and then behaves like the solution is obvious - which of course it isn't - whereon the other men beg him to reveal the solution. But here's the thing: I really didn't care. I could have closed the book at any of those revelation moments and not looked back. A mystery should have a reveal that elicits an "Aaaah!" as it dawns on you how all the pieces slot together. These reveals get more of an "Oh... ok."

[Hunchback Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of 30 mysteries is a fun read, but the mysteries are so short that Asimov is forced to make the solutions obvious or impossibly obscure. For a true Asimov mystery fan only.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

These were written as monthly mysteries for a magazine, which means they have a very simple, repetitive style. Four old men gather in their club to drink scotch and complain about life, which inevitably leads to a story about some former mystery that stumped the police or government and required Griswold's exemplary brain to puzzle out the solution.

Most of the stories aren't very good. It'd be difficult to come up with truly clever brain-twisting mysteries every month for two years, so I can't fault Asimov too much for that, I suppose. (Except that it's the entire point of these stories.) The problem is that even if you discount the need for a superbly innovative aha! moment at the end, the overall tales aren't terribly interesting. They're thoroughly forgettable - something that probably worked well enough for a few pages in a magazine but doesn't hold up in a larger collection. Unlike some of the well-known sleuths Asimov name-drops within one of his own stories, none of his recurring characters stand out; Griswold is pompous and unlikable, and the other old men are all some variety of grumblingly stodgy.

I can't pick any particular stories that I liked more than others. Funnily enough, the only bits I really liked (and stopped to write down) were in a couple of the pre-story introductory settings, where the guys bicker about something until it sparks one of Griswold's stories.

Asimov has some sharply intriguing (and quite timely) ideas about society that I'd like to dig into in more detail. It's probably much more suited for his sci-fi writing - likely why he's more well-known for that than for his mysteries. I'll have to try out some of his other works to see if those are more substantial and worthwhile.

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a light-hearted, comical and entertaining read by one of my favorite all-time authors, Asimov. In the foreword, he warns that some of us readers will"get it" right away (referring to the literature clue he gives in each mystery), some of us will get a few, and some of us will get none of them at all, and be rapping ourselves on the head for the obvious-ness of it, once the explanation was given. I suppose I fall between the second and third categories: I had an inkling, on several stories, of the solution based on the clue given, but I was not 100% correct. For example: "Hot or Cold," where the answer was 40° below zero, in Celsius and Farenheit; "Twelve Years Old," where the difference between how a word is pronounced rests on if it is written in CAPS, First Caps, or Lowercase; "Dollars and Cents," where the clue has to do with an IBM Electric Typewriter. Well, after all, I'm certainly not as smart as Isaac Asimov, am I?

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you ever visit the Union Club, you might see Griswold sleeping in his chair. Or you might just catch him when he’s about to tell one of his stories. Can *you* do better than the other members of the club when it comes to guessing how he solved the mysteries?

I first read the Union Club Mysteries when I had exhausted my library’s Black Widower holdings, but the Union Club is not a carbon copy of the Black Widowers. The series never truly springs to life away from its origins in the brief to write a short ‘can you solve this’ tricky tale, and the Union Club members are really not very distinguishable. The crimes are mostly rooted in Cold War-era spy and counterspy scenarios, though Griswold is such a problem-solving legend that he gets called in by nearly every law enforcement agency apart from the Coastguard, which gives a little variety. Best not to read too many of these at once, though.

[Aiyana · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of short mystery stories, whose highly intellectual solutions tend to verge on the absurd. Don't expect to be able to solve them yourself; you are rarely given enough information to do so. I got a number of partial answers, but didn't figure any of them out entirely. Fun reading, though.

Favorite quote: "[P]laying with numbers is fun even if you have no talent for it." p 149. How true!

(And, because I am in the habit of noting relatively early references to autism in literature, a line from a cop about putting pressure on a witness: "'The kid's got a psychiatrist who says if we put pressure on him, he'll retreat into silence. He says the kid has autistic tendencies, whatever that means. We have to treat him carefully.'" p 94. Written some time between 1980 and 1983)

[Aaron Robb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plus:
While it got off to a rough start, I came to enjoy the stories once I got a feel for the formula.

Minus:
Some of the stories weren't winners. For example, No Refuge Could Save the solution was too specifically American for me to come close to getting unassisted.
Some of the others were a bit cute/felt like Asimov showing off.

While it has to be acknowledged that this was only a collection of a regular monthly piece that Asimov was writing the limitations become obvious.
It would have been great to see more development of our primary characters, more done to distinguish Baranov, Jennings and the narrator.

Interesting:
Some of the solutions presented are challenging and some of them felt so obviously after reading that I felt foolish.

[Josh Hitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar in a way to his great Black Widower stories, Asimov creates another group of old men with a mystery element attached. This time its four men getting together at their club, three usually start discussing something which will awaken Griswold and he will tell about a case he worked and solved with a bit of genius. He leaves out how he solves it till they kick him or yell at him that he couldn't have possibly solve it with such little info, then he sneers and tells them how. These are short tales but most are fun reads, there are a couple of the 30 that I felt didn't really work but still enjoy the setups and the sneering Griswold.

Highly recommended, I like the Black Widowers more but these are also fun.

[Jordan Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this collection toe the line between mysteries and logic brain-teasers. Somewhat like a modern version of Sherlock Holmes, each story has a unique scenario, although sometimes the events in one are referenced in another. (They were originally published in installments in magazine.)
The answers to are always difficult to guess, and sometimes they can be pretty absurd... but still entertaining. Reading through the book can get a little repetitive, as again, these were magazine publications, and so each one follows a formula.
In general, a good read for fans of either Asimov, mysteries or both.

[Shauna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of what were originally a series of monthly stories for a magazine. Each story opens the same- some guys hanging out, chatting at their club- when an elder gentleman, one "Griswald" interjects to tell tales of crime and espionage averted. The set up gets a little tiring but as a magazine serial makes sense, and if I knew someone like Griswald, I would avoid him like the plague. He is, at least in his tales, ultra intuitive and unbeatable in intellect. The tales he tells are interesting, but how he comes to solve them seems improbable. I found this to be an enjoyable read.

[ADay001 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read similarly to how I remember reading the juvenile short-story anthologies of mysteries, except Asimov doesn't always play fair; some of the solutions relied upon only the most tenuous of logic or the most esoteric of trivial knowledge. Others (probably in part because they've been ripped off and repurposed by other authors since) were too obvious. But some were perfect. Happy to have read it.

(This is my standard review for Isaac Asimov short-stories outside the sci-fi genre.)

[Monika Cacev · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this book at a giveaway that my college library hosts every year. I saw the name Issac Asimov, saw the cover, thought to myself: hm, this looks like Sherlock Holmes style mysteries except, if Mycroft was the detective and got it.
And honestly?...Don't bother.

Apart from the prologue, in which Asimov is squeaky about writing for a gasp 'female magazine', and a "hilarious" exchange with his editor in which he says that he doesn't "write erotica" (because ofc, that's all we womenfolk read), none of the stories at that interesting. They just aren't. And the answers to a lot of them are the kind that the reader probably won't think of with the information they are given, it's that kind of bad mystery writing.
(like BBC Sherlock! Ha, see what I did there?)

Additionally, the language hasn't aged well at all, and neither have the attitudes towards women, minorities or just general worldview. There are both better thriller/mystery stories and better Issac Asimov books.

[Lyle Blosser · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the inside back cover flap: "Here are thirty mystery shorts, never before collected between a book's covers, each crafted with Asimovian artistry, studded with Asimovian wit, embellished with Asimovian asides, and propelled by that special Asimovian way with a story." That, in my opinion, expresses my thoughts about this book in better words than I can come up with on my own. Excellent!

[Laurel Kristick · Rating 3 out of 5]

More rereading of quick short stories - these are short mysteries that turn on a the tiniest clue all narrated and solved by the irascible Griswold, who is reminiscent of Harry Purvis in Tales from the White Hart

[Erik Tolvstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compilation of Asimov's "Club Stories". They're entertaining short tales, with a sometimes ironic twist, or a gentle humor twist. There's also usually an element of logic thrown in, where you can often anticipate where the tale will end up.

I enjoyed the anthology, but I preferred Clarke's "Tales from the White Hart" a bit more.

[Nickolai · Rating 5 out of 5]

По сюжетам произведений эта книга похожа на сборники рассказов о черных вдовцах. Только здесь рассказы короче, легче читаются и лишены пустой болтовни между главными героями. Основные темы: шпионаж, преступления, тайны и загадки. Хоть некоторые рассказы и будут понятны только жителям США, в целом сборник мне понравился.

[Cornel Diaconu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looks like these stories are made up "dozen a penny" ... each has it's little catch in the end, but they tend to become boring after you read the first 3 or 4 in this collection.
I finished reading it only because it's Asimov; otherwise I would have gave up reading after the first 25% of it...

[Gillian · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is a central character to these stories called Griswold to whom all the others in the book turn to solve 'mysteries' of one sort or another. Griswold is supercilious in the extreme. After staggering through half this book, I could take no more of him.

[Gina Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun short mysteries; like Encyclopedia Brown for grownups. 4 older men gather together in their club and while they talk, something will remind Griswold of crime or other puzzle he helped solve. Try to solve them yourself before you look at the answer.

[Patri Isoardi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Askmiv es bueno escribiendo ficción y no entiendo por qué quisieron sacarlo de eso. Todos los cuentos siguen la misma estructura, lo cual lo vuelve predecible y aburrido, están narrados a modo de acertijo y las soluciones duelen ser bastate... Sencillas, redundantes, aburridas... No lo recomiendo.

[Alpixels · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insisto, esto solo debería leerse en Inglés.