The Hollow by Agatha ChristieThere is a subgenre of detective fiction, known as the “closed circle mystery.” It refers to a situation in which for a given crime (usually a murder), there are a limited number of suspects, each with credible means, motive, and opportunity for committing the crime. Most of Agatha Christie novels are “closed circle mysteries,” that her signature detective Hercule Poirot solves during the course of the story.
The Hollow too is a closed circle mystery, set in the English country house of a character named Lucy Angkatell, who lives there with her husband Henry and a couple of loyal servants. She is portrayed to be a woman with an overactive mind with which she spins imaginary scenarios, which lends a bizarre feeling to the story from the very start. The minds of the other characters in the book are also shown to be steeped in psychological complexity.
However, unlike most detective and mystery novels, this book doesn’t jump into action right at the beginning. Rather, a few initial chapters are dedicated to introducing the characters; their daily lives, their thoughts and feelings; their opinions about each other. Its only when the reader has clear picture of these characters, is that the story swishes forward quickly.
It stirs into momentum when all these characters are invited as guests in Lucy’s home for a weekend get-together. From there, the story moves at a fast pace, delving into dramatic action that will take the reader through a lot of mystery unfolding and thinking. A guest named John, who is a doctor, is found dead one morning, his body slumped at the edge of a swimming pool, blood dripping into the pool’s water.
Since it is a closed circle mystery, there are a limited number of characters, all of whom look like suspects, each with their own motives for killing the doctor. At this point, the novel features the entry of Hercule Poirot. But in this book particularly, the detective has a shorter role than Christie’s other novels like the “Murder on the Orient Express.”
As the investigation for John’s murder proceeds, Poirot senses that the answer is either too simple or too complex. This is because when John was found dead, his wife Gerda was standing in front of the pool, holding a revolver in her hand. But the character of Gerda is depicted to be meek and unadventurous. For this reason, it becomes difficult to suspect her for murdering John.
Apart from Gerda, John had multiple women in his life, including a sculptress named Henrietta, and a former lover Veronica, who had left him to become a Hollywood star. Written in a simple vocabulary, the book also features love triangles. A character named Midge loves a character named Edward. But Edward loves Henrietta, and Henrietta loves John; the part that makes the mystery somewhat more intriguing.
Added to the relatable character sketches, the novel is dotted with small descriptions here and there, such as the “gold and red autumn leaves,” and the creepily gazing sculptures in Henrietta’s art studio, etc.
Characters make up the highlight, with some being stereotypical while others drawn out as strange and unusual. When it comes to the props, objects like revolvers, boxes of matches, doodles, and sculptures are used in the story. Wrapping up with an abrupt ending, the novel is an entertaining read that illustrates Christie’s brilliance in cooking up intriguing plots from sets of empirical, real-world characters.
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