Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Douglas Adams stands apart from other authors in having most of his books professionally dramatised. This book is no exception, although I found it was the one that eluded my attention the longest. Starting off with a lot of confusion & seemingly jumbled information, I initially put it aside for 1 year or so thinking that it was a bad note in an otherwise flawless collection of work. However, I gave it another go &, once you get beyond the first CD, the plot begins to make sense & you understand why the book was written in such a way. The basic plot is that Richard McDuff is falsely accused of murder after his boss (Gordon Way) is slain outside his car. McDuff then teams up with Dirk Gently (an enigmatic friend from college who has mysterious abilities) in order to find evidence to clear his name. So far, so predictable. What really makes stands this audio book out from the average detective yarn is the science included throughout the plot & the interesting complexities created by the Holistic nature of the universe (e.g. the fundamental inter-connectedness of all things, combined with time travel, means that a completed version of Kublai Khan (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) spells the end of the human race). And I suppose this is why it is such a great book - the plot & the sheer strangeness of the material demand repeat listening/ reading & rewards such people with added insights into what is an astonishingly intricate & well written plot. Add to this that the story has been fully dramatised, with a well picked cast (including Harry Enfield at his best in the role of Dirk Gently) & you will find a true treat waiting to be discovered. Get beyond the complexities of Adams' most difficult work & the scientific insights are there for the taking...

Douglas Adams' take on detective fiction is playful, imaginative, full of whimsy and quantum theory. I sometimes think my sense of humour must be a bit odd or lacking (maybe that's true of most people!) in that half of what I'm told I will find funny leaves me sighing noisily, thinking `but that is so UNFUNNY'. This, however, tickled my funny bone and then some. But then I've always appreciated the fly in humour. Dada and the Theatre Of The Absurd amused me, and the frankly unexpected delights. How often do you expect that a thinking horse, ridden by a malfunctioning robot monk would enter a mysterious time door in a cave in an unpink desert, and that this would result in the horse appearing in a 2nd floor bathroom in Cambridge. Frankly, it's never happened to me, yet, but now I'm living in eager anticipation.... Basic premise (as with a lot of detective stories) is that there has been a murder. All evidence points to our charming hero, Richard. WE know he's not guilty. Enter the rather shady Dirk Gently, ex Cambridge undergraduate, last seen in police custody some years previously, now running an holistic detective agency. Holistic because it is based on the interconnectedness of all things. Which brings us to Quantum Theory. And Schrodinger's cat. Any event in the space-time continuum can connect to any other. Adams can therefore assemble a joyously random collection of people, things and events, and weave them together. The unfolding of randomness, particularly as it is so VERY weird, doesn't leave the reader (well, this reader) sighing noisily yet again going, `oh, come on, TOO MANY coincidences' . In an interconnected world there ARE no coincidences, everything connects . And because his connections are so cleverly daft, its fun to see what gets linked together. My experience of reading this book was like watching a very very clever juggler at work - one with a great line in witty repartee; part of the enjoyment is not only seeing the skill but wondering IF he will drop something - The horse? The Coleridge? The salt-cellar? This is, I'm sure, a love or loathe book. If you liked Adams daft, but clever way of perceiving the world in `Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' you are probably some way to finding that this too will have you smiling, chuckling, chortling and generally pleased you gave yourself up to enjoyment, Dirk Gently style. And we all owe Samuel Taylor Coleridge more than we could ever repay. Or at least his visitor

How Douglas Adams would have loved to see the world of tablets, smart phones, GPS etc etc. This is the better of the two Dirk Gently books, I think. Richard is a programmer who works for Gordon Way, owner of WayTechnologies2 (the first version went bankrupt). Richard is an asset to Gordon, as he wrote the programme which translated company financial statements into pieces of music. Richard is going out with Gordon's sister Susan, a cellist. The book starts with Susan getting angry as Richard has forgotten to pick her up for a date; Richard, at the date (which is really attending the Coleridge Memorial Dinner at his old Cambridge College with his old Professor) having forgotten he was meant to take Susan with him; Richard's old professor, Reg, fiddling around with the space time continuum because he feels sorry for a seven year old girl at the dinner; An electric monk and his horse hitching a ride on the space time continuum with Reg; and Gordon becoming a most surprised ghost due to a misunderstanding with an electric monk. Thus the curtain goes up on this bizarre tale. Soon to enter a malevolent billions year old spirit; a sad piece of humanity who was once a magazine publisher, and the insanity of Dirk Gently - holistic detective. It is a great read- flirting with all kinds of odd facts; pieces of literature and of course - the invention of J S Bach. Absolutely worth reading.

While Douglas Adams is most well know for his Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy series, his Dirk Gentley series has also been making waves for the past few years. This series features much of Adams trademark humor and hijinx, along with a mountain of call backs to make for a great story, Since this is a box set, the book is divided into two parts, the orginal 'Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency', and it's sequel, 'the Long Dark Tea Time of the soul'. The first features Richard MacDuff, a software engineer, on the run after a murder. Fortunately, Dirk Gentley is a college friend of his and agrees to help him out. For a fee of course. The book incorporates a ridiculous number of sci-fi moments, ridiculous characters, and funny jokes, all of which come back in the end to explain the central mystery. The whole novel is one of the best I've read from Adams. The second book, however, was a bit of a let down. Like the first, the series starts with Dirk investigating a murder, but unlike the first, most of the books humor is Kafka comedy. Dirk is repeatedly assaulted and humiliated, to the point where it stops being funny. The story also wraps up far too quickly to be satisfying, with Deuteragonist Kate not even getting a proper sendoff. Essentially, it had all the same problems that made the last Hitchhikers book bad. I give the first book 5 stars, and the second 3.

Unfortunately Douglas Adams was taken from us after just two books based on his Dirk Gently character. That is a loss humanity may never fully appreciate. I would consider this one my lesser favorite of the two Gently novels with “The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul” being my fave and at or near the top of my “deserted island ten” book list for years now. But this is our introduction to Dirk Gently. The very antithesis of Sherlock Holmes. His zen method of driving. His cigarette coughing him awake first thing in the morning. His Jaguar built during those magical years when Jaguars needed more maintenance than petrol. Adams will forever be loved for his Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series but had he more years on this little blue green marble the world may have came to have loved Dirk Gently every bit as much as Arthur Dent.