Psychological Christie....
|
|
A typical Agatha Christie novel - murder, suspects, hardly/no witnesses and of course genius in the form of Poirot. Murder of an adulterous husband whose both mistress and wife are part of the key suspects and a large group of party. Yep you've guessed it. It's much more complicated than that this being an Agatha Christie novel. As Poirot starts to unravel the mystery and characters we see a side to Christie's novels rarely seen before. Here, she sets out not just analysing motives of a murder but looking at the nature of victims and how they lead to such mistakes. It is therefore I think I great book to read that Christie doesn't justify anything but lays down possibilities more rigorously than ever. Recommended if you want a psychological mystery.
|
|
Brilliant classic murder mystery
|
|
The Hollow is bordering on the classic murder mystery style (there's even a suspicious butler. The plot puts nearly every character in the light of suspicion. This novel is stylishly brought to life in the fantastic ITV dramatisation, as an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot.
|
|
|
The Hollow
|
|
If I was to give a general overview of this novel it would sound like a classic Christie whodunnit: the big country house, the strange upper-crust family who all suffer from chronic emotional repression, tortured relationships, the victim found dying by the swimming-pool, and his murderer found standing over him with the gun in her hand. And, of course, M Poirot is conveniently staying down in the village. But all that would be doing Dame Agatha a disservice. Because in 'The Hollow' she has created something much more complex than that. The characters are far more multi-dimensional than you would think at a first glance (except perhaps for Veronica Clay, who is just a stereotypical selfish movie diva). The most striking example of this is her portrayal of Lucy Angkatell, the eccentric matriarch of the family. At first it looks as though Lucy is just going to be a tiresomely loveable "batty" character, but there is a disturbing, almost inhuman, darkness just below the surface, which confuses and unnerves her family when they glimpse it. (And let's face it, there is something decidedly odd about a person who views somebody being murdered in their garden as a bit of welcome light-relief to the usual daily round!). Also, in her portrayal of Henrietta Savernake, the sculptress, the author shows how single-minded the creative person often has to be. Poirot himself seems rather subdued in this story. Dame Agatha herself reputedly hated this book, because she felt Poirot ruined it. He doesn't of course, but he does seem strangely lost and ethereal without his usual good friends, Captain Hastings, Miss Lemon, and Inspector Japp around him. There is a peculiarly haunting quality to this novel.
|
|
|
Follow Me Down to the Hollow, Where We Shall Wallow in Blood
|
|
Mrs. Christie has set out to write a novel - and she has succeeded. The characters who populate the typical country-house 'The Hollow' are vivid and believable, motivated by love, jealousy, hatred and despair - but handled in a unique manner. The most important character is the victim, Dr. John Christow, whose death is the centrepoint of the romantic triangles amongst the eccentric Angkatell family, and who is linked with three women, all in love with him, but in very different ways: his worshipping wife, Gerda; his intellectual mistress, Henrietta Savernake; and his former fiancee, Veronica Cray. Naturally, the motive is jealousy, but the themes of love and jealousy are superbly handled. The detective story elements are not, however, Christie's best. The murde is quite simple - the murderer obvious - but the circumstances, involving several guns and a painting of the Norse world tree Ygdrasil, are inexplicable; and is a re-working of LORD EDGWARE DIES. Poirot is very much in the background, acting only as a deus ex machina at the end - it was a mistake, Christie later felt, to have him in the book. The result: a beautiful yet fatally flawed masterpiece.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada