The Hollow (book)

Agatha Christie The Hollow (1946) Late period Christie. John Christow, Harley street doctor and medical researcher, is murdered, and everything at first points towards Gerda his wife; then all clues point away, but  lead nowhere. Poirot eventually realises that this is the most important clue, and manages to arrive on the scene just as the wife is about to murder Henrietta, the dead man’s mistress (who, along with the other members of the Angakell clan, has been protecting her.) Christie takes more time developing character in this book, and has some interesting things to say about the creative process via Henrietta, who is a sculptor, and the scientific mind, via Poirot (of course), John Christow, and John’s son Terence.
     Christie does some nice satire on the upper classes, and her portrait of Lucy Angakell, an amiable sociopath, is priceless. Other Christie motifs: the long shadows of the past, the plight of the working woman, the malign effects of over submissiveness, the nature of obsessive relationships, the persistence of feudal attitudes in modern England, and ironic but retributive justice (Gerda  dies by drinking the poisoned tea she intended for Henrietta).
     Very well done. Could make a very good three or four part series. This book marks the beginning of Christie’s late phase, when she allows herself the luxury of digressions and extended character portrayal instead of sticking closely to the puzzle plot. The effect is that the plot becomes more complex than the puzzle, which makes the book much more interesting. She doesn’t always carry it off (in her last books, she rambles too much), but when as here she integrates all the apparent digressions into the main line of the story, the result is very effective. ****