YMMV / Black Widowers

• Captain Obvious Reveal: Post 2001, readers are much more likely to figure out the solution in "Nothing Like Murder".
• Magnificent Bastard (More Tales of the Black Widowers):
  • "The Iron Gem": Jeweler Latimer Reed's dinner guest is an undistinguished man who a mutual acquaintance brings to Reed's home. Reed shows his guest a family heirloom and the package in which his great-grandfather mailed it to his family. The guest recognizes a rare stamp on the package and steals it. He distracts Reed by pretending to be oddly fixated on the heirloom and attempting to buy it, first with pleasant words but minuscule sums, then for a large amount of money but with insulting words that make Reed refuse. He does such a good job of distracting Reed that it is ten years before Reed learns what happened, and by then he has no way to track down his dinner guest and no way to prove his former ownership of the stamp.
  • "No Smoking": Williams is a socially awkward young executive who spends years plotting a million-dollar embezzlement. He and his partner Adams trick the company into teaching them the computer skills necessary for the theft. They apparently agree that whichever one of them receives a promotion will carry out the theft after two years of building trust and then wait out the manhunt in a slum before they split the money. Williams and Adams are the finalists for the position and Williams deliberately makes a bad impression to force the company to promote Adams, who carries out the theft successfully, only for Williams to kill him to get all of the money for himself. Williams only comes under suspicion due to an unconscious habit that reveals he was deceiving the interviewer who decided not to promote him.
• Values Dissonance: In "The Old Purse", many of the guests display a tolerance of terrorism (due to Gray-and-Gray Morality arguments) that feels more uncomfortable post-911.