Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Hollow

June 29, 2022 11:36 AM - Season 9, Episode 4

Socialite Lady Lucy Angkatell worries about her family guests arriving for the weekend - they all loathe each other. Inviting Hercule Poirot as a distraction, the weekend is interrupted when philanderer John Christow is found dying by the swimming pool with his wife holding a gun, but who shot him?
posted by Carillon (2 comments total)

Interesting that the change from the books is that she meant to kill Henrietta before Poirot arranges the cups, rather than in the adaptation which has her making the choice herself. Megan Dodds took me forever to realize where I'd seen her before, but it was in Ever After as the mean sister to Drew Barrymore. Also funny on the tails of the James Fox/Edward Fox discussion, this one now has Edward Fox as the butler. So a one-two punch of deplorable foxes.

Also, taking this from the wiki, 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 Christie to claim in her Autobiography that she ruined the novel by the introduction of Poirot. I should track down this novel because at least in the adaptation I don't feel that way at all.
posted by Carillon at 11:45 AM on June 29, 2022

Once again, too many guns. The downfall here was the plot was more complicated that it needed to be. Why would you even need a holster in the first place? Why is a sculpting a horse when “you don’t like horses” considered a clue? Why is the swimming pool full of leaves?? Seriously I thought that was supposed to be a plot point. All those servants and they don’t have a skimmer? I had to pause and look up Megan Dodd too: the London CIA Station Chief in MI-5/Spooks.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:44 PM on July 2, 2022