The eccentric Lucy Angkatell has invited the Christows, along with a number of other members of her extended family, to her and Sir Richard's estate for a weekend. 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. On the morning that he and his downtrodden wife, Gerda, are due to travel down to the country to weekend with friends, Dr John Christow, a successful physician and leading researcher, allows his little daughter to tell his fortune with cards.
His late arrival, jarring, given the established atmosphere, led Christie to claim in her Autobiography that she "ruined by the introduction of Poirot". 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. 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. The book first published in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in September 1946 and in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in November of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6). A paperback edition in the US by Dell books in 1954 changed the title to Murder After Hours. The Hollow is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie which was first serialised in the American Collier's Weekly from May 1946 and then in the U.K.
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