I see no reason why a router can't just send a triggered partial update of a failed route, remove the failed route from it's routing table, and start the hold-down timer immediately.
Why must the router wait to receive an advertisement of a route that it already knows has failed before starting the hold-down timer? It seems unnecessarily repetitive.
And another random question:
What the hell happens when you assign a mask that is < 24 bits to a Class C address as shown in this article under the "Prefix Lengths" heading? (192.168.32.0/19) Is that allowed?
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094823.shtml