It is the second volume in Graham's Chief Inspector Barnaby series, preceded by The Killings at Badger's Drift and followed by Death in Disguise.

While attending an amateur production of Amadeus to watch his wife, Joyce's performance, Chief Inspector Barnaby witnesses the gruesome, all-too realistic murder of an actor on stage, after the tape applied to blunt the razor blade used to slit his character's throat is removed, revealing the lethal blade.

As he investigates the shocking crime, Barnaby unearths a whole host of dark passions and resentments nestling beneath the surviving cast's genial facade.

Publishers Weekly stated in its review of the novel: "A most enjoyable read, right down to the classic gathering of all the suspects at which Barnaby reveals the killer and the motive.

"[2] Elaine Kendall, a book critic of the Los Angeles Times expressed: "As a satire on amateur theater and the idiosyncratic types who invade it, “Death of a Hollow Man” is often amusing, faltering only when author Caroline Graham reaches for the archly dated style of Allingham, Christie or Marsh.