Dirk Gently Detect

by Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a ghost-horror-detective-time travel-romantic comedy epic.

Dirk Gently is a private detective who isomer interested in telekinesis, quantum mechanics and lunch than fiddling around with fingerprint powder, so his investigations tend to produce startling and unexpected results. A simple search for a missing cat uncovers a bewildered ghost, a secret time-traveler, and the devastating secret that lies behind the whole human history and threatens to bring it to a premature end.

Sadly the cat dies.
--front flap

• ISBN10: 0671625829
• ISBN13: 9780671625825
• Publish Date: 15 May 1987
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 264
• Language: English

Reviews

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3 stars

Software developer Richard MacDuff gets caught up in a bizarre situation involving a ghost, time travel, extra-terrestrials, and, of course, a detective.

I first heard The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the radio in London. I went on to the tapes, the books, and even saw the TV show and movie. The non-video versions, with all their differences, were terrifically funny.

Here, Adams branched out into something not Hitchhiker-related. He kept the strange and paradoxical, and attempted similar humor. Unfortunately, it just didn't work as well. Where Hitchhiker had the infamous Infinite Improbability Drive to explain things, this book doesn't, and it shows - strange things just happen, but for no really good reason. The result is an amalgam of gimmicks and gags that is only mildly amusing.

Some parts of the book are fun - there are extended references to Coleridge, and some nice parody of English colleges. A lot of the right elements are there. But it doesn't all hang together very well; the connective plot is thin, and in some cases possibly absent.

All in all, a mildly fun book for Adams fans, but skippable for casual readers.