I recently read Agatha Christie’s novel, The Hollow.

It was, by my count, the twenty second Hercule Poirot novel, though there is a sense in which it is only sort-of a Poirot novel. In her autobiography, Agatha Christie claimed that she ruined the novel by bringing Poirot into it but I think that she was mistaken. The problem wasn’t that Poirot was out of place, but that she didn’t commit and really bring him into it. (spoilers follow.)

The main character of The Hollow is John Christow. In many ways this remains the case even after he is dead. He is one of those larger-than-life characters who is tremendously charismatic, but that was not the reason he was described as being so alive, by all of the characters he met. He was driven. He wanted things very deeply and, in spite of having decent manners, he let everyone else know what he wanted, too.

This is, weirdly, the sort of man that young women tend to deeply misread. When a man like this is good looking, young women tend to read him as strong, courageous, and principled. (There is, btw, a mirror condition where young men read a certain kind of young woman as far better than she is if she is beautiful.) John Christow was not all that strong, and he wasn’t particularly courageous, and he didn’t have much in the way of principles. In fact, John Christow was a very selfish man. He happened to also be intelligent and have talents which made him a good doctor.

Or at least he was a popular doctor. There was no real evidence in the book that was actually a good doctor. There are people who testify to it, but they never cite any successes that he had. In the beginning of the book we see a few patients who visit him and he’s sympathetic and says all of the right things and writes them expensive prescriptions that he knows won’t do anything except reassure them that no expense has been spared to try to help them. That might be useful, but there’s nothing noble or great about that.

He was also putting a lot of time into researching “Ridgeway’s Disease,” which Agatha Christie made up for the book. It is a progressive disease that is invariably fatal, and Christow is trying to find a cure, for which people regard him as great. The thing is, there’s no evidence that he’s made any meaningful progress. He’s tried a lot of things, but so do people who buy a lottery ticket every day. Oddly, many of the young women in the book give him credit for the success which he has not had. The only assurance that they have that he will have this success is his good looks and powerful personality.

This is where Poirot could have been used to very powerful effect. Poirot is not beautiful and Poirot is not young. But Poirot has an equally powerful personality to John Christow and also something which John Christow lacked: success. The contrast between the two would have been great. All John Christow’s powerful personality would have come to nothing against the equally powerful personality of Poirot and his automatic complete lack of being impressed would have shown Christow’s pretentiousness up for what it was.

Gerda Christow and Henrietta Savernake and even old Mrs. Crabtree, John’s favorite patient, all wanted John Christow to be a great doctor, so in their minds, he was. This is, ultimately, the problem with idolatry. The greatness of the object is always only in the mind of the worshiper. But there is a real potential for interesting reactions when the object of such worship is brought into contrast with something undeniably greater.