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OF the many publications that have been associated with (but not written by) Agatha Christie, The Passing of Mr Quinn is certainly one of the most curious—and, until now, one of the rarest. Originally published in 1928, the book is actually a novelisation of the silent film of the same title, which had been released the same year and was the very first screen adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. The film itself is now lost, along with its script, meaning that this tie-in publication is our best insight into this filmmaking first. The movie was publicised as an adaptation of Christie’s short story ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’, which had introduced the charming but mysterious stranger Harley Quinn, a man whose sudden appearance motivates characters to untangle a mystery that has been hanging over them for many years.
The timeline for the story might initially seem to be reasonably straightforward: Agatha Christie’s original short mystery ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’ was published in the March 1924 edition of The Grand Magazine before being adapted into the July 1928 film that used the same title. The film’s new interpretation of the mystery was then novelised as this book, The Passing of Mr Quinn, and Christie’s original short story was later published in April 1930 as the opening part of the short story collection The Mysterious Mr Quin, where it was renamed ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’, perhaps to differentiate it from the film and this novelisation. However, the development of this story is a little more complicated than this timeline may indicate.
One point is immediately obvious to those familiar with the original short story—the film and its novelisation diverge significantly from Christie’s narrative. In her original story, a mysterious death in the past is raised in a discussion amongst friends, who are spurred on by Quinn to make sense of the events. The film takes the same death as its starting point of the dramatisation, but after the main suspect is cleared it moves off in a wildly different direction as it emphasises the romantic relationship between two key characters and the appearance of a mysterious stranger.
In order to make sense of The Passing of Mr Quinn’s journey between media we need to begin by looking at its original magazine appearance in 1924. The first thing to note about this version is the title, which spells the titular character with two ‘n’s. This is consistent with the later film, but not with Christie’s book of the short stories, which established ‘Quin’ as the definitive spelling. The title of both the film (which is often misspelled in articles) and this novelisation is not an aberration, then, but a reproduction of the original character’s name as it had appeared in the first four stories in The Grand Magazine. In fact, it was only when The Story-teller magazine published the next six stories that the spelling changed from Mr Quinn. Debuting in the Christmas 1926 issue and appearing monthly under the general headline ‘The Magic of Mr Quin’, this ‘New series of brilliant mystery stories’ established Quin as Christie’s third serial character after Hercule Poirot and Tommy & Tuppence. (Miss Marple did not appear anywhere until December 1927.)
The title is not the only change that occurred between the original publication of the story and its later appearance in the book collection of Quin stories some six years later. The Grand Magazine’s original ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’ is several hundred words shorter than the version that would eventually be published in the book as ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’, and it is clear that Christie substantially redrafted the mystery before handing it over to Collins for The Mysterious Mr Quin collection. Some sections, such as the beginning, are almost completely rewritten, while elsewhere smaller details change. For example, Christie aficionados may notice that Alex Portal from ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’ is named Alec in this 1928 novelisation, but this is in fact the original name of the character as printed in 1924. Elsewhere, Mr Satterthwaite ages from 57 in the original magazine to 62 in the collected short stories, while in terms of tone there is marginally more emphasis on Quinn’s qualities as a quiet manipulator in the original text.
A unique feature of The Grand Magazine story was the addition of line drawings to illustrate key moments, including the first visual representation of Mr Quinn. However, it strictly adheres to the text’s description of him being in ‘motoring clothes’, and as a consequence his attire of a sensible rain jacket and flat cap does make him seem rather less mysterious than the reader may otherwise have imagined.
It was therefore this original version of the debut Quinn story that was adapted by director and screenwriter Leslie Hiscott to form the basis of the film The Passing of Mr Quinn. The picture was made quickly and inexpensively at Twickenham Studios by Julius Hagen Productions for film distributor Argosy in order to satisfy new demands that a certain percentage of domestic film productions should, amongst other things, be based on a scenario by British writers. The Passing of Mr Quinn would be one of the first of many ‘quota quickies’, made specifically to satisfy the new regulations rather than as the result of any particular artistic or business desire for the title. In the event, the film of The Passing of Mr Quinn took only a few elements of the original short story to form the basis of its bizarre and somewhat illogical—but nevertheless entertaining—screenplay that would not only veer away from the original narrative but also completely reinvent the title character. To say more would ruin the surprise of the events as they unfold in the following book, but suffice to say there is little in common between the Mr Quinn of this story and Agatha Christie’s original character.
The film was given a relatively limited release, and was not well received. On the whole, critics found it overlong (at 100 minutes) and somewhat preposterous, with particular disdain
for the portrayal of Quinn himself by Vivian Baron. Nevertheless, some commentators found elements of the mystery intriguing and commended it for the interesting visual presentations of some scenes. However, the harshest critic was possibly Agatha Christie herself. The specific details of the agreement that allowed an adaption—and then a novelisation—of her story are lost to us, as no paperwork survives, but we can infer a great deal from the circumstantial evidence. For one thing, although this book’s title is the same as both the original short story and the film, the text renames Quinn once more, this time to ‘Quinny’, with a curious disclaimer at the beginning of the text requesting that readers understand that this is the same character as seen in the film. (It appears to have been a last-minute alteration, in that one instance of Quinn rather than Quinny survived unchanged in the text.)
We can assume that this further change of name was made in order to assuage Christie’s displeasure at the appearance of the book—from her own publishers, no less—although it did not prevent her name from being featured prominently on the dustjacket. Christie seems to have been unaware that she had signed away the rights to novelise the film. This annoyed her greatly and informed her later business dealings. When her agent, Edmund Cork, formulated a (later abandoned) deal with MGM in the 1930s to film some of her works, she was insistent that the contract should make it clear that, while the studio may make original mysteries for the screen featuring her characters, they were not to be novelised.
Nevertheless, such discomfort came too late for The Passing of Mr Quinn, and the novelisation was printed—although