Mysterious Mr. Quin Book

This is an anthology of 12 short stories featuring Mr. Harley Quin and his sidekick Mr. Satterthwaite. I would call it a full anthology except that for some mysterious (bad pun totally intended) reason it does not include two last stories of Mr. Quin.


This time I would not talk about each story separately as it seems rather pointless - they have same-y feels, but in a good sense. In any way Mr. Satterthwaite has great knowledge of human nature and psychology. He can always be found in company of famous people observing the drama happening between them. Sometimes the drama becomes a crime. Mr. Satterthwaite does not pretend to be a sleuth, but in such cases Mr. Quin makes a dramatic appearance and gives just (barely) enough clues to Mr. Satterthwaite for the latter to untangle the mystery. He himself never even solves one. Sometimes he does even shows himself to anybody but his friend - if such a mysterious guy (entity? god? incarnation? death itself?) can have one.

As one can see the stores are mysteries with some supernatural elements - but fear not, the solution always lays in pure material plane.

Anything outside of Mr. Quin himself could be found in normal life of twentieth century.

I already mentioned two missing stories: The Harlequin Tea Set and The Love Detectives. They can be found in another anthology Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories. In fact this is probably the only place where the second one can be found. They are not outstanding in any sense, but even minor efforts of Agatha Christie are worth reading. There are exceptions though - I am looking at you, Passenger to Frankfurt.

While I like the idea of Mr. Quin himself, Mr. Satterthwaite as a character is nothing to write home about. This is totally intentional as even he himself prides in being a simple observer all the time except when his meddling is called for - or he is forced to act by gentle pushing by Mr. Quin, to be exact. This makes him very unremarkable character; he is neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple. Tommy, Tuppence and Mrs. Oliver can also beat him with their arms tied behind their backs.


Add to this the fact that the mysteries themselves were decent, but none of them was on the level of Murder on the Orient Express or And Then There Were None and my rating of 3 stars would not come as a surprise.