Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan re-team for novel The Hollow Ones

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

From 2009 through 2011, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and author Chuck Hogan collaborated on a trilogy of novels called The Strain, The Fall, and The Night Eternal, which served as the basis of the The Strain television series that ran on FX on four seasons. Now del Toro and Hogan have crafted a new novel together – this one is called The Hollow Ones, and Grand Central Publishing has announced an August 4, 2020 street date for it. Copies can be pre-ordered at THIS LINK.

The 336 page novel has the following description:

A horrific crime that defies explanation, a rookie FBI agent in uncharted territory, and an extraordinary hero for the ages: an investigation spirals out of control in this heart-pounding thriller.

Odessa Hardwicke's life is derailed when she's forced to turn her gun on her partner, Walt Leppo, a decorated FBI agent who turns suddenly, inexplicably violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. The shooting, justified by self-defense, shakes the young FBI agent to her core. Devastated, Odessa is placed on desk leave pending a full investigation. But what most troubles Odessa isn't the tragedy itself — it's the shadowy presence she thought she saw fleeing the deceased agent's body after his death.

Questioning her future with the FBI and her sanity, Hardwicke accepts a low-level assignment to clear out the belongings of a retired agent in the New York office. What she finds there will put her on the trail of a mysterious figure named Hugo Blackwood, a man of enormous means who claims to have been alive for centuries, and who is either an unhinged lunatic, or humanity's best and only defense against unspeakable evil.

The Hollow Ones is said to take the reader to "a strange, terrifying, and darkly wondrous world of suspense, mystery, and literary horror". It's also said to be a "chilling, spell-binding tale" and a "hauntingly original new fable" that features del Toro and Hogan's "most fascinating character yet".

Those descriptions certainly hype it up, so hopefully fans are going to love it once they have the book in their hands (or the audiobook in their ears).