Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Nothing like the tv show series but perfectly wonderful to read in itself. A nice insight to know more about Dirk's past and just a fun little story. Douglas Adams truly is a wonderful writer. I mean within the first chapter, he just use beautiful descriptive language. Ahhhh, loved it so much.

Douglas Adams has brought the pages to life as we follow Dirk Gently along in his life. I only picked up this book because I knew Adams from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and I was not disappointed. There is a part 2, "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" and I have to say that I loved that book also. Great reads.

A classic Douglas Adams novel. More subtle than hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, but full of the same mystery and surprise conclusions. The man definitely had a knack for science and entertainment. A classic for sure.

While both startling and stimulating, Adams also lulls you comfortably into a world where you can predictably expect the quite unexpected. And he's a crafty good writer with a delightful mind -- well worth spending time with! hthe hat

For fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I highly recommend that you also read the Dirk Gently books. All the quirkiness of Adam's characters support the plot twists of an unusual suspense novel.

I actually bought this as a replacement for an older hard-back copy that started falling apart (due to excessive lending). Though the Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy is considered Douglas Adams' quintessential work, this is probably my favorite single book of his... mainly because nearly every subtle detail in the story somehow becomes relevant to plot. It's both insanely funny and extremely intelligent at the same time.

But, before reading, it might be a good idea to refresh your memory about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his writing of The Ballad of Kubla Kahn. Explaining why would likely reveal too much of the plot.

I liked the TV series "Dirk Gently" better, the book does a lot of jumping around dropping one thread and picking up another in
the next chapter. Toward the end the jumping gets more frequent, even within the same chapter, which irritated me.

These book were something else. I read them after Hitchhikers and didn't think anything could top those but these books are honestly just as good in their own way. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is just such a funny concept and Douglas Adams has really good execution.

Douglas Adams took us on a fanciful trip through the universe with his more than a trilogy of Hitchhiker books ... and here you can enjoy an earthbound adventure with Dirk Gently, a private eye like you've never met before. It will put a smile on your face f'sure.

Interesting, l but somewhat disjointed, first story Dirk is more fully drawn. In both access not the together it almost like a serious of events leading to a conclusion that leaves the reader wondering, which is fine Pk Dock was the matter of the hat genre

Both books start out with confusing goings on that don't make sense, and seem unrelated but then begin to coalesce into a finale which the author doesn't trust the reader to figure out but tells him outright in the closing pages of the book. In the meantime, we are entertained with various puns and word games. The closest outright joke I found was where Dirk gets frustrated over the auto mechanic's inability to fix his car in a timely fashion so he steals the mechanic's truck; parks it a few miles down the road; and waits to take back his fixed vehicle when the mechanic tries to chase him down with his own auto. One also has to be attentive. I loved it when the demon dogs filled the air with their noiseless howling. I'm afraid the puns/jokes are a little nerdy. I enjoyed them, but they were clearly not the type that many would understand.

Losing Douglas Adams was an international tragedy. He had more laugh-out-loud absurdist twists & delightfully penned descriptions, similes & metaphors than anyone I've ever had the good fortune to read!