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I wrote in my review of the Swedish version that it's not all the way as good as the first Dirk Gently - and then I gave it 5 stars and placed it on my favourites shelf. The English original text is, of course, better.

20,000 ratings, 500 reviews? Why bother to add another one to the masses? You don't need me to tell you to read this book, if you've gotten this far you're either already a fan of Adams or like me you picked it up because of the moody title and should have now found out that it's a sequel to the original Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Fear not, you don't really need to have read the other one to enjoy this additional piece of absurdity from Douglas Adams. Instead I'll make five points about the second Dirk Gently if I may.

1. I've read this book more than any other Douglas Adams book.

2. This is my good friend Emily's favourite ever book; she loves it so much that she judges people by whether they have it on their bookshelf or not, whether they've even read it and most importantly how much they enjoyed it. Happily I still enjoyed this book, my friendship with Emily is safe.

3. The BBC TV series recently aired and was totally and completely brilliant, the performance of Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently is as close to perfection as you get in a TV adaptation. So good was his performance that I read through this book today and could only imagine him as Dirk, as if Adams wrote it with him in mind (impossible but Dirk doesn't have any problems with impossible, as long as he can find out how it's done.)

4. Written in 1987 apparently pizza was not delivered in the UK at this time. The horror! I cannot imagine a world where you can't get pizza delivered. No wonder Pizza Hut was such a big thing when it opened in my town as a child.

5. Combining the content of this novel and the fact that he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Neil Gaiman was clearly influenced by Adams when writing American Gods AND for the first time I realised that some of the parts of Good Omens I'd attributed to Terry Pratchett in my mind were obviously examples of early Gaiman.

And there you have it, another collection of words written about this book on GR. Well worth reading.

Unfortunately, Adams' sequel to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency isn't as tightly-written as its predecessor. On the sentence level, Adams is still writing furiously funny jokes, but The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul ends up feeling like first-class humor wrapped loosely around second-class plot and characters. Adams has been accused of writing punchlines rather than plots, and it shows in this book perhaps more so than anywhere else. I also thought the book's flow suffered greatly in places, with important scenes not having enough space devoted to their development (especially in the last few pages, such as the Valhalla scene). In addition, Dirk Gently's "fundamental interconnectedness" approach to investigation--where everything is important because it's linked to everything else--is still present here, but the linked items don't line up as neatly as they did in the first book. I also found the conclusion lacking: at the end of Dirk Gently's..., I said "Fantastic!" aloud to the room around me; at the end of The Long, Dark... I turned the page and, when there was nothing else to read, said aloud, "That's it?" So: five stars for humor, but minus two for poor plot and flow.

Read this book when it first came out. Great storyline - truly holistic and connected. Dialogue is excellent, and even the minor characters are a blast to read. Only the refrigerator and boy were insufficiently explored, but this is a minor point.

Looking forward to rereading the third book, which I hardly remember. Also planning to check out the BBC television show based on this book soon - it was highly rated. As for the book, the proper rating is 'a suffusion of yellow' - which covers any number larger than 4.

3.5*

This was entertaining but the mystery aspect was weak - basically just an excuse for Dirk Gently to be involved in the story. Dirk was never a nice person but he seems worse in this book than he did in the previous one - making the nonappearance of his friends from the first book understandable.

Not the best of Doogie, but not the absolute worst either. The random, all-over-the-place approach that worked for his most popular work, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, does not, unfortunately, work for this book. The pacing is off in many places, while the ending is rushed in a way that suggests someone was probably holding a gun to his head or withholding the next payment (which is often more effective than one, and infinitely less messier. You have no idea how tough it is to get brains off the walls without leaving a mark). Still a largely enjoyable read, but people who don't absolutely love Marvin would be better off finding another entry point into the mad, mad world of Douglas Adams.

How do you describe Adams' Dirk Gently books? I have a hard time not because they can't be genre-classified but because they don't fit any novel form out there. Stream-of-consciousness on the part of the author? Is Gently the main character? Who is the main character? What is going on? There's one thing going on, though--Adams does a lot of describing. It's a wealth of description. Plot? Pish-tosh! We don't need no stinking plot! That's not why you read an Adams novel anyway. So just let Adams mess with your mind. But if you aren't acquainted with his work, read the first two novels in the Hitchhiker's Guide series first, then come in for a landing on the first Dirk Gently novel. You'll thank me.

Continuing Dirk Gently's adventures takes us further into DNAs universe with his absurdist, surreal humor that only he could conjure up, almost at will.

Kate misses her flight to Oslo then the check-in counter at the airport explodes... Meanwhile Dirk Gently eventually goes to meet a client and stumbles upon his head revolving on a turntable... Does this sound strange? Actually there's much humor involved and a bunch of goings on with the gods too...

Douglas Adams never fails to cheer me up. Best listened to on audio.

1. baskıda belli hatalar var. Her zaman olduğu gibi yayınevine bildirildi. Gelecek baskılar daha iyi olacaktır :)