A collection of short stories blending mystery and romantic melodrama, about a strange crime-solving partnership that has more than a tinge of supernatural. Put it under another Christie book I appreciated much more on a re-read.
I can’t remember my initial reaction to Mr Quin stories more than twenty years ago, but it was probably along the lines of, well that was… weird. As a rule, Christie’s mysteries tend to be firmly grounded in reality, and the ambiguous nature of Mr Quin’s character must have felt rather disorienting. This time around, however, a hint of supernatural was my second-favourite thing about the stories.
My favourite thing in the book has to be Mr Satterthwaite, the protagonist of the collection even if it doesn’t bear his name. Mr Satterthwaite can be described as a harmless snob, a dried-up little man in his sixties with an elfin face, the means to indulge his love of beauty, fine food and travel, and preference for the company of those belonging to either social or artistic elite. He has a strong feminine side to his personality, which makes him a sympathetic listener people naturally confide in. He’s not catty exactly, but some of his inner observations about other people are absolutely priceless.
Despite a thousand of glittering acquaintances, Mr Satterthwaite comes off as a lonely soul with no real friends or confidantes. To add to the melancholy, he is one of life’s observers, a man who has seen plenty of life from the sidelines but never truly touched it, a realisation that pains him from time to time. However, Mr Satterthwaite gets a thrilling chance to be a part of the drama every time he runs into mysterious Mr Harley Quin, whose very presence is a sign that something intriguing is about to happen.
If it wasn’t for the fact that other characters clearly see and interact with Mr Quin, you could easily interpret him as a figment of Mr Satterthwaite’s imagination, or perhaps a hidden part of his personality. The only thing we learn about Mr Quin is that he’s tall and dark, and that a trick of light occasionally makes him look as if he was wearing a multicoloured costume. He appears and disappears seemingly at will, and as the book progresses he increasingly seems to be not quite human. Sometimes, he appears on behalf of the dead, and other times he acts as a benefactor of lovers.
Some stories in the book involve murder and theft, while others lean strongly into romance. While the mysteries themselves are fairly standard and many aren’t especially hard to figure out, the ethereal character of Mr Quin gives them an eerie, peculiar feel. He never solves the mystery directly, rather he acts as a catalyst whose questions and even mere presence causes Mr Satterthwaite to view things in a new light. According to Mr Quin, the events can only be seen clearly when looking back from a distance, and stories like The Coming of Mr Quin and The Dead Harlequin are in fact about solving mysteries that had happened years ago.
I really enjoyed following enigmatic Mr Quin and his conduit in the mortal world, endearing and perceptive Mr Satterthwaite. The details of the individual stories might fade from my memory once again, but certainly not the memorable duo at their centre.
P.S. I’m not sure now what to make of Mr Satterthwaite’s appearance in Three Act Tragedy, a Poirot novel that definitely has nothing supernatural about it. Does Mr Quin also exist in the Poirot universe, or are we meant to treat this collection and Three Act Tragedy as parallel worlds of sorts?
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