Hole detection is an important task for preserving energy in wireless sensor networks. Distributed approaches are commonly used for detecting holes. In these approaches, complex calculations are performed at each node for determining the existence of holes in the network. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called FD-CT for detecting holes in wireless sensor networks by exploiting the power of force-directed algorithms for generating layouts from a given topology. The generated layouts are then processed with a contour tracing algorithm for identifying the sensors along the boundary of holes in the networks. By using force-directed and contour tracing algorithms, our approach is able to detect holes from a given topology without using location information or anchor nodes. The proposed approach is extensively evaluated on different type of networks and force-directed algorithms. Experiment results show that FD-CT with KK-MS-DS algorithm can achieve 90% sensitivity and 98% specificity among all the algorithms evaluated.