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? ( )

Entertaining, and clean shorts, none of which I was able to solve, though that's not saying much at this point in my life. This earns a spot in our permanent mystery collection. ( )

I'm on vacation, and cleverly lightened my load by only bringing ebooks. However, I managed to lose my charger on day one, so was forced to scrounge the shelves of 30 year old light fiction at the family cabin. I found this collection of very short mysteries by Asimov. Not amazing literature, but it kept me interested through a rainy afternoon. ( )

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.

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.

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. ( )

This is not Asimov's greatest collection of mysteries. They're all very short stories (with the wrapping story set in the early 1980s and the core mystery between the 1940s and then) that invite the reader to figure out the trick at the end. Some of them worked, but others just didn't work, several presuming unacceptable stupidity on the part of the police, and several followed a usual Asimovian mystery pattern of figuring out what a pun a message sender must surely, obviously have meant. They're similar to the Black Widowers, but the shorter length sucks much of the character and fun out of them. ( )