The Hollow Ones is a 2020 horror novel written by acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro and crime novelist Chuck Hogan, in their second collaboration following The Strain, and the first in The Blackwood Tapes, a planned series.
Rookie FBI Agent Odessa Hardwicke and her veteran partner Walt Leppo are investigating allegations of corruption in the New Jersey state government, only for the case to take a startling turn when their primary lead goes on a killing spree, and when Hardwicke is forced to shoot Leppo after he begins exhibiting the same homicidal behavior after gunning the man down. Under investigation, Hardwicke accepts a low-level assignment to clear out retired agent Earl Solomon's office after he suffers a stroke, only for Solomon's advice to lead her to team up with the mysterious and immortal Hugo Blackwood to discover the truth of what happened.
Flashbacks focus on both Blackwood's past and Solomon's previous investigation into the lynching of a white man in the Deep South during the 1960s.
The book includes examples of:
- Agent Scully: Hardwicke is very skeptical of the supernatural and it takes a while for her to accept that the cause for the killing sprees is paranormal in nature.
- Ambiguously Evil: Blackwood carries a sinister air about him, though he seems to be entirely in the up-and-up. The same goes for Mr. Lusk.
- Amoral Attorney:
- Subverted by Lusk, who is simply creepy, and nothing more.
- Entirely averted by Linus Ayres, who's a Nice Guy who deeply loves Odessa.
- Asshole Victim:
- Downplayed. Cary Peters was undoubtedly corrupt, but the narrative makes it clear that Obediah's body-jacking of him and subsequently trying to kill his whole family while in his body was something he was totally undeserving of.
- Played straighter with the Klansmen that Blackwood humiliates after they threaten Solomon.
- Hack Casby, the white lynching victim, was the head of a local chapter of the Citizen's Council, a white supremacist organization.
- Batman Gambit: Obediah's killing spree is an elaborate plan to lure Blackwood out.
- Big Bad:
- The present day has Obediah, the last free Hollow One, who is conducting a killing spree across the New York-New Jersey area.
- The 1960s segments have Abdiel, a slave demon manipulating Jackson's racial tensions For the Evulz.
- Complete Immortality: Hollow Ones are “elemental” and cannot be killed by any means. Blackwood compares the change between their corporeal and incorporeal forms to water freezing or boiling, implying that a Hollow One is constant and eternal in the same way a set quantity of matter is.
- Cool Old Guy: Solomon in the present day is just as much of a badass as he was in the 60s.
- Deep South: The setting of Solomon's flashbacks.
- For the Evulz:
- Abdiel intends to use the racial tensions in Jackson, Mississippi to cause a riot, exploiting Pastor Ebberts, Vernon Jamus, and the souls of dead slaves to accomplish it, just because it can.
- The Hollow Ones do what they do simply because they find taking people for joyrides fun.
- Framing the Guilty Party: After Blackwood burns down the local church while stopping Abdiel, Solomon quickly blames it on some nearby Klansmen, both to stop a race riot and to get Sheriff Ingalls and SAIC Macklin to do force them out of town.
- Karmic Death: White supremacist Hack Casby was killed in a lynching.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Odessa's mentor and partner Leppo, whose death kicks off the plot.
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: Jackson, Mississippi was the site of the lynchings of four black men, but it only attracts national attention when a white man (who is implied to have had a hand with the prior lynchings) is lynched.
- Mysterious Past: Subverted. As it turns out, Blackwood is fairly open about his past (well, most of it) should you ask about it.
- Occult Detective: Blackwood is an immortal detective deeply rooted in the occult who is summoned to aid in investigations when a letter is delivered to his home, or when his name is mentioned enough times.
- Religion of Evil: Subverted by Palo. It's made abundantly clear that the religion is not evil in and of itself; the real problem is that Obediah is manipulating practitioners of it for his own ends with promises of power, and it's mentioned that Hollow Ones and other supernatural entities are just as prone to doing the same thing with Catholicism, as they do with Pastor Eppert.
- Rotating Protagonist: The book alternates between Odessa's present-day investigation, Solomon's 1960s investigation, and Blackwood's origin in the 1500s, and each of their point of views.
- Sacrificial Lion: Solomon is possessed by a Hollow One, forcing Odessa to kill him in self-defense.
- Sinister Minister: Pastor Ebberts, but not by choice.
