In her Autobiography, Christie claimed that the success of And Then There Were None set her on the path of being a playwright as well as a writer of books and that only she would adapt her works for the stage from then on and that The Hollow would be her next play. In writing this, Christie forgot her intervening plays of Appointment with Death (1945) and Murder on the Nile (1946) in addition to Moie Charles and Barbara Toy's 1949 adaptation of Murder at the Vicarage.