The Hollow

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The Hollow (published in 1946) is a detective fiction novel written by Agatha Christie. It features detective Hercule Poirot.

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Lady Angkatell, intrigued by the criminal mind, has invited Hercule Poirot to her estate - The Hollow - for a weekend house party. The Belgian detective's arrival at the Hollow is met with an elaborate tableau he believes to be for his amusement: a Harley Street doctor, John Christow, lies in a pool of red paint; his timid wife, Gerda, stands over his body with a gun while the other guests look suitably shocked. But this is no charade. The paint is blood and the corpse is real. However, the gun in Gerda's hand is not the one that killed the doctor, turning a pleasant country weekend into one of Poirot's most baffling cases, where everyone has a good reason to murder Christow.

Christie - who often admitted that she did not like Poirot, a fact parodied by her recurring novelist character Ariadne Oliver - particularly disliked his appearance in this novel. His late arrival, jarring given the established atmosphere, led her to claim in her autobiography that she "ruined [the novel] by the introduction of Poirot."

Adaptations

Christie adapted the play for the stage in 1951 but omitted Poirot.
In 2004 the novel was filmed as a television movie featuring David Suchet as Poirot and Megan Dodds as Henrietta Savernake.

Agatha Christie
Detectives: Hercule Poirot \| Miss Marple \| Tommy and Tuppence \| Ariadne Oliver \| Arthur Hastings \| Chief Inspector Japp
Novels: The Mysterious Affair at Styles \| The Secret Adversary \| Murder on the Links \| The Man in the Brown Suit \| The Secret of Chimneys \| The Murder of Roger Ackroyd \| The Big Four \| The Mystery of the Blue Train \| The Seven Dials Mystery \| The Murder at the Vicarage \| The Sittaford Mystery \| Peril at End House \| Lord Edgware Dies \| Murder on the Orient Express \| Three Act Tragedy \| Why Didn't They Ask Evans? \| Death in the Clouds \| The A.B.C. Murders \| Murder in Mesopotamia \| Cards on the Table \| Death on the Nile \| Dumb Witness \| Appointment with Death \| And Then There Were None \| Murder is Easy \| Hercule Poirot's Christmas \| Sad Cypress \| Evil Under the Sun \| N or M? \| One, Two, Buckle My Shoe \| The Body in the Library \| Five Little Pigs \| The Moving Finger \| Towards Zero \| Sparkling Cyanide \| Death Comes as the End \| The Hollow \| Taken at the Flood \| Crooked House \| A Murder is Announced \| They Came to Baghdad \| Mrs McGinty's Dead \| They Do It with Mirrors \| A Pocket Full of Rye \| After the Funeral \| Hickory Dickory Dock \| Destination Unknown \| Dead Man's Folly \| 4.50 From Paddington \| Ordeal by Innocence \| Cat Among the Pigeons \| The Pale Horse \| The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side \| The Clocks \| A Caribbean Mystery \| At Bertram's Hotel \| Third Girl \| Endless Night \| By The Pricking of My Thumbs \| Hallowe'en Party \| Passenger to Frankfurt \| Nemesis \| Elephants Can Remember \| Postern of Fate \| Curtain \| Sleeping Murder
as Mary Westmacott: Giant's Bread \| Unfinished Portrait \| Absent in the Spring \| The Rose and the Yew Tree \| A Daughter's a Daughter \| The Burden
Short story collections: Poirot Investigates \| Partners in Crime \| The Mysterious Mr. Quin \| The Hound of Death \| The Thirteen Problems \| Parker Pyne Investigates \| The Listerdale Mystery \| Murder in the Mews \| The Regatta Mystery \| The Labours of Hercules \| Poirot's Early Cases
Plays: Akhnaton \| The Mousetrap \| Witness for the Prosecution \| Verdict \| Rule of Three \| Fiddlers Three

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