Agatha Christie's successful career foresaw the use of her eight owned houses as settings for her novels, which were "Taken at the Flood", "Dead Man's Folly", "Five Little Pigs", "A Pocket Full of Rye", and "Crooked House". However, the setting for "The Hollow" was inspired by Francis L. Sullivan's house. Francis Loftus Sullivan was an English film and stage actor who portrayed Hercule Poirot in the plays "Black Coffee" (1930) and "Peril at End House" (1932) and also played the lead in "The Witness for the Prosecution" (1953), for which he won a Tony Award in 1955.