“He instituted this Chair of Chronology to see if there was any particular reason why one thing happened after another and if there was any way of stopping it. Since the answers to the three questions were, I knew immediately, yes, no, and maybe, I realised I could then take the rest of my career off.”

Books by  Oscar Wilde,  Terry Pratchett and  Douglas Adams have (at least) one thing in common. I can easily pick funny, witty, interesting quotes from every page. The above quote represents Adams’ surreal sense of humour quite nicely, I think.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is of course, Douglas Adams’ lesser known series, compared to the incomparable (but often compared to) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Still, there are only five “Hitchhiker's” books, excluding Eoin Colfer's  And Another Thing..., which—in all fairness—I have not read, but I am not that big a fan of Colfer's  Artemis Fowl, so the idea of a sequel by him is a nonstarter for me.

So how does Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency compare to  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? What kind of question is that? Damn you! (Sorry, I’m feeling a bit schizophrenic). Anyway, the answer to that question would be “favorably”. It does not have the epic space opera setting of Hitchhiker's, but then Adams wanted to write something different rather than retread old ground so the smaller scale of the setting is understandable.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is not really about the eponymous Dirk Gently’s, I would not even call him the protagonist. He is one of the central characters. As the book has to be called something the title Adams went with is a suitably intriguing one. The plot of the novel is a combination of several seemingly unrelated plot strands. It starts with an “Electric Monk” looking for a Door (the capital D distinguishes from any old door), then the scene switches to a dinner at St. Cedd's College in Cambridge where Professor Urban Chronotis performs a seemingly commonplace magic trick is for a child. Soon after that a horse is found in the professor’s bathroom. A wealthy businessman is shot dead for no reason, and his ghost starts to roam. An alien spacecraft accidentally lands and soon blows up.

The disparate plotlines are actually interrelated, and the only man who can find the connection between them is Dirk Gently, the world’s first “Holistic Detective”, which means that he understands “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things”. Sherlock Holmes famously said “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”, Dirk Gently goes one better by not even eliminating the impossible (see one of the selected quotes below). His ability to make intuitive leaps verges on being a superpower.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency reminds me a little bit of Kurt Vonnegut's  Breakfast of Champions, another novel with different plotlines that seem to bear no relation to each other. I thought that was a bit of a mess, but a funny, admirable and beautiful one by the time I finished it. “Dirk Gently’s” is similarly messy, but the eponymous Dirk untangles all the plot strands by the end of the book. For the most part, it is easy enough to follow, and always funny, but the climax and denouement are a little convoluted. If your attention strayed during some seemingly unimportant scenes some of the expositions at the end may be confusing. For the most part Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a madcap surreal comic novel with a lot of sci-fi elements that you can expect from Douglas Adams. However, a shade of sadness, melancholy and loneliness permeate the last few chapters of the book.

The characters are mostly well developed, with Dirk, being the standout due to his eccentricity and superhuman intuition. Not far behind is the enigmatic Professor Urban Chronotis who is much more than he seems, and he also appears in  Doctor Who: Shada, based on Adams’ Doctor Who TV episode script.

If you are a fan of  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but have read all the books already you should not miss this book. On the other hand—or perhaps the same hand but different fingers—if you have not read all the “Hitchhiker's” books, or have not read any, or never heard of Douglas Adams, you should still not miss this book. Who then, should give this book a miss? I don’t know, dead people perhaps?

_________________________
Notes:
• There was a BBC adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency in 2010, only a few episodes were made. Quite good as I recall.

• A new adaptation is being made by BBC America (announced March 2016)

• I am looking forward to reading the sequel  The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul soon.

In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn
A science fiction book decree
With plot purloined from Doctor Who
A cross between a witches' brew
And a nice cup of tea.

So several chapters serially were wrote
Until the text was finished, good and whole
A sovereign remedy or antidote
Against the long dark teatime of the soul

And there were geeks who answered alien prayers
While moving house accompanied by their boxes
And there were sofas stuck upon the stairs
In curious angles causing paradoxes.

But oh! the changes made to history
A tricky deed for any witch or warlock
Even when travelling by time machine
And claiming to be resident in Porlock

A ghost and an Electric Monk in a dream I saw apart
They were the most eccentric pair
I've come across 'most anywhere
But still they touched my heart

If I could piece together
The fragments I find now
Then all around would marvel
And open-mouthed avow

Weave a circle round him thrice
And never mind his extra head
For he of Adams books has read
And fables heard from Paradise

**Rating: 4/5**

Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?'

I almost thought that there were a few too many ideas stuffed into this book - which might've been a bit more comprehensible if it was slightly longer - and I think I enjoyed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy just a tad more. However I can't deny the sheer ingenuity and comedic genius of Adams; this was confusing as heck but it was an entertaining ride regardless. I admittedly had to do a little googling to understand the context behind Coleridge's Kublai Khan and the story of the man from Porlock, but once I did everything fell into place beautifully. It's honestly amazing how Adams was able to tie everything together so intricately, while never failing to make me laugh.

“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"

"The what?" said Richard.

"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."

"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."

"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”

I recently re-read Dirk Gently, since the first time I read it was in the seventh or eighth grade, and so I really didn't remember much of it. I must say it is absolutely fantastic. It is one of the few books which as I read it I was imagining what you could do for a film version. I think it would be a fantastic work to bring to the big screen, particularly after the modest success of Hitchhiker's...

That said, I love Douglas Adams. The man was a genius at creating characters, and the Gently series might be more endeared to me than the Hitchhiker's.

Ο Ντερκ Τζέντλυ είναι μια ευχάριστη έκπληξη!
Φαντάζομαι ότι για την υπόθεση δεν μπόρούν να γραφούν πολλά όχι λόγω σποϊλερ όσο λόγω του ότι η υπόθεση του εκτείνεται ταυτόχρονα σε διαφορετικούς χρόνους και τόπους και η εμφάνιση των πρωταγωνιστών σε αυτά τα χωροχρονικά σημεία επηρεάζει την προηγούμενη και τη μελοντική εξέλιξη του έργου. Είναι και αυτή η βρετανική τηλεφωνική εταιρία που δεν παρέχει ικανοποιητικές υπηρεσίες όταν διασπάται το χωροχρονικό συνεχές, είναι και ο Σρόντιγκερ με τη γάτα του, υπολογιστικά συστήματα, καλόγεροι που πιστεύουν για να μη χρειάζεται να το κάνουμε εμείς και ...
Το βρήκα εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον και σίγουρα ο Adams θα έχει και συνέχεια γιατί σίγουρα δε μπαίνει στους συνηθισμένους συγγραφείς αλλά ούτε και στους επιτηδευμένα παράξενους!

Douglas Adams' underated masterpiece leads Dirk Gently from a search for a missing cat to unlocking the secrets of time travel and saving the human race from total extinction.

I thought no-one could write a better comic novel than 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' until I first read this. I've subsequently re-read this novel countless times and it never fails to entertain, I'm still finding references to literature and popular culture that I've previously missed.

That a novel can be re-read despite the reader knowing what is about to happen is a testement to any novel but this one can be re-read with a suspition that something different will happen this time!

I first read this book quite a while ago, probably not long after it came out. A time we could look forward to a Douglas Adams book instead of having to look back to the past. He is missed.

I don't think I got anything more out of Dirk Gently than I did twenty years ago, but that's just fine.

It's funny without being silly, wry without being mean. I love Adams's humor, his turns of phrase, and how everything comes together in the end. Or the beginning. Or both.

Having read other Douglas Adams books (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), I was already familiar with his writing style. It's the equivalent of going for a ride with the Mad Hatter on the Knight Bus. Sometimes confusing, always funny, and eventually you will end up where you are supposed to go. I love Douglas's snarky English humor. But I would definitely say his works are not for everyone.

Dirk Gently starts out with a series of series of seemingly random people and events that wrap around and tie together as the story develops. I liked how Coleridge was tied in throughout the book. But I was confused by the leap made at the end. I wish it would have been explained a little more. I think I figured it out, but I had to look up the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to double check.

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we not eff it after all."

This book is Douglas Adams' take on detective fiction in which Sherlock Holmes meets Doctor Who, quantum theory meets time travel.

As with many detective stories this book features a murder and all evidence seems to point to an innocent man, Richard. Enter the rather shady Dirk Gently, ex Cambridge undergraduate, last seen in police custody some years previously, now running a holistic detective agency. Holistic because it is based on the interconnectedness of all things, any event in the space-time continuum can connect to any other. Adams therefore assembles a wonderfully madcap collection of people, things and events, and weaves them into this imaginatively playful romp. Normally TOO MANY coincidences would have the reader rolling their eyes with frustration but here it just seems to work, it's fun to see what gets linked together.

Now I'm sure that this is a Marmite book, you will either love or loathe it. If you enjoyed Adams whimsical style in his better known 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' then you are already well on the road to enjoying this one, if not, then it's unlikely to convert you. Personally, whilst I didn't actually laugh out loud, I found it a very clever piece of writing that left me with a smile on my face and that as far as I'm concerned can be no bad thing.

I last read this when I was really young and was shortly getting off a fantastic kick of HHGttG wanting MORE, as, I assume, most people do when they get on a Douglas Adams kick.

Like the other series, every page is filled with wonderfully witty and fascinating and wise (crack) quotes that will delight and amaze and generally blow most writing away by the sheer audacity.

To think that Douglas Adams never considered himself a writer! Truly amazing. And of course us fans just snicker at that and keep reading.

I admit to really liking this but not loving it as much as the Hitchhiker series. I don't know. Maybe I just wanted more of the idiot and less of the incomprehensible mystic in systems-theory sheep's clothing.

What can I say? As an adult, I'm doing an about-face and saying that this might be better by far. It's still wacky and zany and full of oddball moments, but it's closer to Earth... mostly... just not always in the same time-zone. :) And on top of that, it was fun as hell getting into all the old computer stuff and getting into the poetry and the music and ESPECIALLY the problem of the couch.

The couch stayed with me all these years and it was such a wonderful character. It almost reaches the same heights as a certain fridge in the next book. Of which I'm doing a re-read next. :)

Now, to be sure, I probably wouldn't have done a re-read at all if it hadn't been for the BBC tv production of the same name, and even as I was watching it I was going... "Is this remotely the same?"

Definitive answer: SOME. lol. Not all that much. Characters, some. Situations, hints. Zany? That's full-tilt. :) All said, no complaints on either side of the tv screen. )

I'm glad to be doing all of the above. :)

Basic Plot: Dirk Gently (holistic private detective) proves how the world is interconnected by solving a murder and saving the entire human race, among other things.

The concept is hilarious- a detective who makes the most random connections possible to solve mysteries. His method of getting places (follow someone who looks like they know where they're going and you'll end up where you need to be eventually) is hysterical, and I must admit I've used it on a few occasions when lost. Only Douglas Adams could have created this madness and actually made it work. If you're a fan of the Hitchhiker books, it's a variation of the wackiness there, in a slightly (if that is even possible) more focused (though still very scattered) way.

I discovered Douglas Adams by coincidence. I found his book Last Chance to See, co-written by Mark Cawardine, about animals near extinction and Douglas' and Mark's trip around the world to see some of them, in a box with "Mängelexemplare" (old books, sometimes not in top condition that are therefore sold at a reduced price). His humour stood out even in the German translation and when I told a friend about it, she told me all about an odd-sounding story about a guy hitchhiking across the galaxy and something about the number 42. ;)
Since I've always been an odd duck, I went and bought that book too (in the English original this time) - and have read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy once every year (May 25th to be exact) ever since.

However, despite having heard of Dirk Gently too, I have never picked up these books, for some weird reason. I'm glad I rectified this now because although I LOVE Hitchhiker, this is actually better!

Douglas Adams has not just been a British author with the usually expected British humour. Sure, he had a dry wit, but also a mind as sharp as a katana and the observations about humanity that he put into his books, while being disguised as silly dialogue or even sillier happenings, are always very deep, reflective and spot-on.

So this story is about the titular Dirk Gently, although that is only the most recent in a long list of names he's used. He doesn't even make an appearance for the first quarter of the book, actually. Mr. Gently believes in the interconnectedness of all things, therefore he named his detective agency "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
It's this interconnectedness that has to be proven when a former friend of his with a sofa being stuck halfway up the way to his apartment gets bored half to death at the annual reading of a Coleridge poem (THE Coleridge poem, I should say) at Cambridge university, then witnesses a conjuring trick by one of his old professors, finds a horse in the bathroom of that same professor (after it finally got rid of its rider, an Electric Monk), and finally gets caught up in a very weird murder involving his boss, followed by people acting strangely indeed.
You're confused? Good!
It's a bit like watching Doctor Who and getting all of your brain in a tight knot, but you know exactly that it will all make perfect sense in the end.

As I said, silliness abound in DA's book, but all the silliness serves a purpose and that is what makes this book not only entertaining, but actually intellectually challenging and bloody perfect! Especially eccentric Dirk Gently himself with his weirdness actually makes perfect sense - it's the world that is bonkers.

Thus we end up with gems like the following (some of my favourite bits that I marked in the book):

Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.

So two legs were held to be both more suitable and cheaper than the more normal primes of seventeen, nineteen or twenty-three; the skin the Monks were given was pinkish-looking instead of purple, soft and smooth instead of crenellated. They were also restricted to just one mouth and nose, but were given instead an additional eye, making for a grand total of two. A strange-looking creature indeed. But truly excellent at believing the most preposterous things.

She tried to worry that something had happened to him, but didn't believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she'd do it herself.

... coincidences are strange and dangerous things.

... there is a huge difference between disliking somebody - maybe even disliking them a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day.

This was a public telephone so it was clearly an oversight that it was working at all.

Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see?

... normal English condition, that of a damp and rancid dish cloth ...

... he believed with an instant effortlessness which would have impressed even a Scientologist.

"It disturbs me very greatly when I find that I know things and do not know why I know them. Maybe it is the same instinctive processing of data that allows you to catch a ball almost before you've seen it. Maybe it is the deeer and less explicable instinct that tells you when someone is watching you."

"And Mrs. Roberts? How is she? Foot still troubling her?"
"Not since she had it off, thanks for asking, sir. Between you and me, sir, I would've been just as happy to have had her amputated and kept the foot. I had a little spot reserved on the mantlepiece, but there we are, we have to take things as we find them."

The cry "I could have thought of that" is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

"Charitable, ha!" said Dirk. "I pay my taxes, what more do you want?"

One thing I could also identify with immensely was this description of Susan:
She had an amazing emotional self-sufficiancy and control provided she could play her cello. He had noticed an odd and extraordinary thing about her relationship with the music she played. If ever she was feeling emotional or upset she could sit and play some music with utter concentration and emerge seeming fresh and calm.
Only in my case the cello has to be replaced by books and playing music by reading. But yes, a very precise description of me.

Oh, and despite me being too young to know too much about what it was like with the very first computers being sold, it was so cool to read about all the technical stuff because I know from interviews and Neil Gaiman's biography of Douglas Adams what a techie / computer enthusiast he was (plus, from a historical point of view alone it must have been pretty exciting).

So you see, not just a thrilling writing style with engaging and quirky characters, but also wit dry enough to start a wildfire that illuminates a wide range of important topics, making the reader not only laugh but also reflect, all while you're having the time of your life.
Honestly, no idea why this is rated lower than Hitchhiker, because despite me being a huge fan (I even bought a towel and stitched "42" and "Don't Panic!" onto it and carry it with me every Towel Day), I am firmly sold on Dirk Gently and think this first volume beats the first of the 5 volumes in the Hitchhiker trilogy.