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Encyclopedia > The Hollow
For other uses, see Hollow.
The Hollow
Author Agatha Christie
Cover artist Not known
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Crime novel
Publisher Dodd, Mead and Company
Publication date 1946
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 279 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN NA
Preceded by Sparkling Cyanide
Followed by The Labours of Hercules

The Hollow is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1946 and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in November of the same year. The UK edition retailed at eight shillings and sixpence. A paperback edition in the US by Dell books in 1954 changed the title Murder after Hours. Look up hollow in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), mainly known as Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. ... For other uses, see Country (disambiguation). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Sherlock Holmes, pipe-puffing hero of crime fiction, confers with his colleague Dr. Watson; together these characters popularized the genre. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Frank Howard Dodd, (1844-1916), was the leading publisher at Dodd, Mead and Company of New York City from 1870 until his death, January 16, 1916. ... See also: 1945 in literature, other events of 1946, 1947 in literature, list of years in literature. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... “ISBN” redirects here. ... Sparkling Cyanide (published in 1945), also known as Remembered Death is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie. ... The Labours of Hercules is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie. ... Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. ... Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), mainly known as Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. ... Frank Howard Dodd, (1844-1916), was the leading publisher at Dodd, Mead and Company of New York City from 1870 until his death, January 16, 1916. ... See also: 1945 in literature, other events of 1946, 1947 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The Collins Crime Club was an imprint of UK book publishers William Collins & Co Ltd and ran from May 1930 to April 1994. ... The shilling was a British coin first issued in 1548 for Henry VIII, although arguably the testoon issued about 1487 for Henry VII was the first shilling. ... Obverses of the 1787 and 1818 sixpence depicting George III. The sixpence, known colloquially as the tanner, was a British pre-decimal coin, worth, as the name indicates, six pence. ...


The novel is a fine example of a "country house mystery" and was the first of her novels in four years to feature Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot: one of the longest gaps in the entire series. It is notable for its greater emphasis on characterisation. Gumshoe redirects here. ... David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in The Dream Hercule Poirot (pronounced in english ) is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. ...


A shorter version was serially published as The Outraged Heart in Collier's Weekly in four parts from May 4 to May 25, 1946. Colliers (May 7, 1932) Colliers Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. ... is the 124th day of the year (125th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 145th day of the year (146th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Contents

Plot introduction

On the morning that he and his downtrodden wife, Gerda, are due to travel down to the country to weekend with friends, John Christow allows his little daughter to tell his fortune with cards. When the death card is drawn, he pays no attention, but the appearance of an old flame at The Hollow seems to be the final link in a chain of fatal circumstances.


Plot summary

The charming and eccentric Lucy Angkatell has invited the Christows, along with a number of other members of the extended family. John is already having an affair with Henrietta Savernake, a talented sculptor and, as is demonstrated by what follows, brilliant improviser. He has always remembered with nostalgia an early love, Veronica Cray, who suddenly appears in the house on Saturday night asking to borrow a box of matches. She is living at one of the two nearby cottages, the other of which is currently occupied by Hercule Poirot, who has been invited for lunch on Sunday. Veronica and John go off together, and he returns much too late: 3 am.


The next day, Poirot arrives at the house to witness a scene that seems strangely staged. Gerda is standing with a gun in her hand above the body of John, who is bleeding into the swimming pool. Standing, seemingly transfixed, are Lucy, Henrietta and Edward. John’s last word, in a note of urgent appeal, is “Henrietta”. It seems cut and dried that Gerda is the murderess, but in taking the revolver from her hand Henrietta apparently fumbles and drops it into the swimming pool, destroying any evidence. Later, however, it is discovered that the pistol that Gerda had been holding was not the pistol with which John had been shot. None of the witnesses has actually seen Gerda shoot John, and it seems difficult to build a case against any of the other potential suspects. At first Lucy herself seems to be a strong suspect, when it is discovered that she had kept a pistol concealed in her basket of eggs, but the pistol seems to be of the wrong caliber. Henrietta is also implicated, not least by the leaving of an unusual doodle in the pavilion, apparently at the time that John and Veronica had been there. When the murder weapon turns up in Poirot’s hedge, it has fingerprints on it that match none of the suspects. The word calibre (British English) or caliber (American English) designates the interior diameter of a tube or the exterior diameter of a wire or rod. ...


These are all pieces of deliberate misdirection on the part of the family. They know in fact that Gerda is indeed the murderess, and are attempting to avoid her imprisonment. As it happens, the murder, with a motive of jealousy, was planned, in that she had taken with her two pistols, planning to be discovered with a pistol in her hands that would later be discovered to be the wrong weapon. Henrietta destroys the evidence of the first weapon instinctively, and later goes back and retrieves the second weapon. She hides it in a clay sculpture of a horse in her workshop, then gets it handled by a blind match-seller, and places it in Poirot’s hedge. Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another. ...


There is a romantic subplot in the novel. Midge is in love with Edward, but Edward has always been in love with Henrietta. During the course of the novel, Edward realises that he loves Midge and asks her to marry him. During a walk to an area where Edward has walked with Henrietta, Midge believes that he is too deeply in love with Henrietta still, and she calls off the wedding. Later that night, however, she saves Edward’s life when he attempts suicide by putting his head in a gas oven. With this rather dramatic proof of his need for her, she relents and the wedding is on again.


With all the evidence apparently destroyed, the family believes that it has saved Gerda, but there is one final clue: the holster in which the murder weapon was kept. Gerda has cut this up and placed it in her workbag. When Henrietta attempts to retrieve it in order to destroy the final means of proving Gerda’s guilt, Poirot arrives and prevents her from drinking tea that Gerda has poisoned. Gerda herself drinks the poisoned tea and escapes justice by this means.


Henrietta who, along with Lucy, has emerged as an attractive and well-characterised heroine throughout the book, ends it by visiting in hospital one of John’s patients who now has little hope of a cure but still shows a resilient spirit. Leaving the hospital, she reflects that there is no happy end for her, but she resolves to embark on a sculpture of herself as Grief.


Characters in “The Hollow”

  • Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
  • Inspector Grange, the investigating officer
  • Sergeant Clark, a policeman in the case
  • John Christow, a Harley Street doctor
  • Gerda Christow, John’s wife
  • Sir Henry Angkatell, the owner of The Hollow
  • Edward Angkatell, a distant cousin of Henry and entailee of the family's beloved house, Ainswick
  • Lucy, Lady Angkatell, Henry’s wife
  • Midge Hardcastle, Lucy’s young cousin
  • David Angkatell, a student
  • Henrietta Savernake, a sculptor
  • Veronica Cray, an actress
  • Gudgeon, the butler
  • Beryl Collins, John's secretary
  • Mrs. Crabtree, a patient of John's
  • Terence, John's young son
  • Zena, John's young daughter

Harley Street is a road in the City of Westminster in London. ... This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ...

Trivia

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."[1] In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... Ariadne Oliver is a fictional character in the novels of Agatha Christie. ... Cover of the first English edition of 1793 of Benjamin Franklins autobiography. ...


Adaptations

“Telefilm” redirects here. ... David Suchet OBE (born May 2, 1946) is an English actor best known for his television portrayal of Agatha Christies Hercule Poirot in the television series Agatha Christies Poirot. ... Megan Dodds (born 15 February 1970) is a British based American stage and television actress. ... Agatha Christies Poirot (U.S. title Poirot) is a popular British television series starring David Suchet as Agatha Christies detective character Hercule Poirot. ...

Publication history

Dustjacket illustration of the UK First Edition (Book was first published in the US)
Dustjacket illustration of the UK First Edition (Book was first published in the US)
  • 1946, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1946, Hardback, 279 pp
  • 1946, Collins Crime Club (London), November 1946, Hardback, 256 pp

Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

References

  1. ^ Christie, A: "An Autobiography", page 489. Fontana, 1978
v • d • e
Works by Agatha Christie
Detectives: Hercule Poirot • Miss Marple • Tommy and Tuppence • Ariadne Oliver • Arthur Hastings • Superintendent Battle • Chief Inspector Japp • Parker Pyne
Novels: The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Secret Adversary • The 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 • Dumb Witness • Death on the Nile • Appointment with Death • Hercule Poirot's Christmas • Murder is Easy • And Then There Were None • Sad Cypress • One, Two, Buckle My Shoe • Evil Under the Sun • N or M? • The Body in the Library • Five Little Pigs • The Moving Finger • Towards Zero • Death Comes as the End • Sparkling Cyanide • 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 • After the Funeral • A Pocket Full of Rye • Destination Unknown • Hickory Dickory Dock • 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 Thirteen Problems • The Hound of Death • The Listerdale Mystery • Parker Pyne Investigates • Murder in the Mews • The Regatta Mystery • The Labours of Hercules • The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories • Three Blind Mice and Other Stories • The Under Dog and Other Stories • The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding • Double Sin and Other Stories • The Golden Ball and Other Stories • Poirot's Early Cases • Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories • Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories • The Harlequin Tea Set • While the Light Lasts and Other Stories
Plays: Black Coffee • And Then There Were None • Appointment with Death • Murder on the Nile/Hidden Horizon • The Hollow • The Mousetrap • Witness for the Prosecution • Verdict • Rule of Three • Fiddlers Three • Akhnaton
Radio (and Television) Plays: Three Blind Mice • Butter In a Lordly Dish
Other Published Works: The Road of Dreams • Star Over Bethlehem and other stories

  Results from FactBites:
 
Hollow (Bleach) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1786 words)
A hollow is a plus spirit that has lost its heart, and is driven to devour others (both living and dead) to fill that void.
A hollow's mask is formed to protect the naked instinct that is left in a being after the loss of its heart, and in some ways is the tangible form of the hollow's madness.
The hollows have different abilities and differing monstrous appearances; the low level hollows are small and can only attack in a melee style, whereas the bigger and better hollows have all sorts of killing implements.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving, Washington. 1917. Rip Van Winkle & The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Vol. X, Part ... (7978 words)
The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the headless horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the church-yard.
Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter until they gradually died away—and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted.
This road leads through a sandy hollow, shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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