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A review by thaurisil
The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie
4.0
This unusual collection of short stories features Mr Harley Quin and Mr Satterthwaite. Each story has Mr Satterthwaite as the main character. He is an elderly bachelor, a friend of countesses and duchesses, rich yet humble, a connoisseur of the arts, a good reader of people, and has always been an onlooker in life. He encounters curious incidents. Sometimes, there is an outright mystery – a death for instance, or a missing object. Sometimes, Mr Satterthwaite just gets the feeling that something is wrong, that a character is hiding something, or that something is going to happen. In each story, Mr Quin appears. Sometimes he arrives after the mysterious incident has taken place, and sometimes his arrival forebodes the incident. His appearance is always mysterious and sudden, and greeted enthusiastically by Mr Satterthwaite.
It is implied that Mr Quin knows all the answers, but he never directly solves the mystery. Instead, he probes the other characters gently, asking them questions, and helping them make deductions from their own observations. The most common beneficiary is Mr Satterthwaite, and Mr Quin empowers him to become not just an observer in life, but an active participant as well. It is not so much that Mr Satterthwaite gains self-confidence, more that Mr Satterthwaite, who has a wealth of experience of life and reads people and situations accurately, learns to tap on his experience to reflect on the things he has seen and to arrive at conclusions.
It's interesting, and a demonstration of the breadth of Agatha Christie's writing abilities, that these stories differ very much in tone and mood from her usual works. I've come to expect hard, practical facts from her, but these are dark, dreamy and foreboding. There is a supernatural element in all of them, in the suddenness of Mr Quin's appearance and disappearance always at the right time and place, in the way the harlequin motif pops up unexpectedly, in the wind and the leaves and the stars in the sky. Mr Quin almost resembles a fairytale character. Yet nothing ever crosses out of the zone of reality, except for the last story in which Mr Quin is visible to Mr Satterthwaite but invisible to another character. Even then the solution to the mystery is based in reality.
Mr Satterthwaite calls Mr Quin the "advocate for the dead", but I see Mr Quin as more of an advocate for lovers. In most of the stories, lovers are separated by certain circumstances or misunderstandings. The people involved are lost, desperate, or frozen. The solutions to the stories clear up the misunderstandings, and almost all the stories end on a note of love and redemption.
My favourite of the stories was "The Man from the Sea", but every story was strong and a joy to read.
It is implied that Mr Quin knows all the answers, but he never directly solves the mystery. Instead, he probes the other characters gently, asking them questions, and helping them make deductions from their own observations. The most common beneficiary is Mr Satterthwaite, and Mr Quin empowers him to become not just an observer in life, but an active participant as well. It is not so much that Mr Satterthwaite gains self-confidence, more that Mr Satterthwaite, who has a wealth of experience of life and reads people and situations accurately, learns to tap on his experience to reflect on the things he has seen and to arrive at conclusions.
It's interesting, and a demonstration of the breadth of Agatha Christie's writing abilities, that these stories differ very much in tone and mood from her usual works. I've come to expect hard, practical facts from her, but these are dark, dreamy and foreboding. There is a supernatural element in all of them, in the suddenness of Mr Quin's appearance and disappearance always at the right time and place, in the way the harlequin motif pops up unexpectedly, in the wind and the leaves and the stars in the sky. Mr Quin almost resembles a fairytale character. Yet nothing ever crosses out of the zone of reality, except for the last story in which Mr Quin is visible to Mr Satterthwaite but invisible to another character. Even then the solution to the mystery is based in reality.
Mr Satterthwaite calls Mr Quin the "advocate for the dead", but I see Mr Quin as more of an advocate for lovers. In most of the stories, lovers are separated by certain circumstances or misunderstandings. The people involved are lost, desperate, or frozen. The solutions to the stories clear up the misunderstandings, and almost all the stories end on a note of love and redemption.
My favourite of the stories was "The Man from the Sea", but every story was strong and a joy to read.