Thumpingly Good (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams)

Name: The Solid Grey

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Product:	Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
Date:	21/10/01 (351 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: just as good as hitchhikers

Disadvantages: none

Do you like science fiction?, do you love humourous Science Fiction?, do you like really original humourous science fiction?, well then you've come to the right place!

Written by Douglas Adams (and if you didn't know a writer I adore), the same author of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is almost more of the same, but not quite, however it is just as good.

It was due to my love of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy that I came to read this book, and with great sadness that I’ve just read it again in respect to Douglas Adams who died recently.

Its described on the back cover, and by the author as ‘A thumplingly good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time-travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic 217;, although that’s not quite all true, its a fairly good description.

Dirk is a detective, a holistic one, and his idea of detection is not by looking for fingerprints, following clues and the silly things that the police usually do, but believes in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things to solve the problems that people bring to him. Which means that all things are connected to each other, and only by looking at the whole crime can it be solved. This pretty well sums up the plot because there are various threads that are all connected and revolve around each other, there is a murder but little detection is needed as you already know the killer, there's sci/fi in the form of time travel, and the ghost, surprisingly (?), in the form of a ghost.

The story centers around Richard Macduff, his girlfriend, his girlfriends brother whose also his boss, his old university professor and his very unusual secret, the the death of his aforementioned boss, and Dirk Gently whose case it becomes.

Despite being called Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, much like the Hitchhikers books, it doesn’t so much tell a story from their
or its point of view but tells the story from someone’s else’s, in which he/it plays a part.

It is actually a very entertaining book, there is a lot to think about, a few laughs, and a few things that are so novel, it makes you wonder how Douglas Adams came up with them. I would say that you have to be a fan, or at least enjoy this type of writing to really enjoy it, otherwise, and to be brutally honest, you'd probably think its a lot of silly nonsense.

This is the first of two Dirk novels, the second is The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul, its also the first non Hitchhiker book that Douglas Adams wrote, and I gather disappointed some of the Hitchhiker fans by writing it. The two Dirk novels were written back to back, as Douglas Adams said that, the time you most feel like writing a book is when you’ve just finished one, and so he signed a two book deal.

He also annoyed some of the die hard Doctor Who fans, with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, as he reused some of the ideas from a Doctor Who story he’d written some 9 years earlier (whilst also script editing Doctor Who). Called SHADA, it was to be a six part story for Tom Baker, unfortunately strike action at the BBC meant that the recording of the story was never finished (the recorded material however, was released on a video in 1992). Considering that SHADA was cancelled and nothing became of it there was no real reason that he shouldn’t reuse the ideas, however........... he also reused some ideas from another Doctor Who story that was made, called City Of Death, he co-wrote it with the Doctor Who producer Graham Williams (although it was Douglas that wrote pretty much all of it) after initial drafts for a story hadn’t met up with their approval. Since this story was never novelised why not see it here instead?.

I love the book, but I also love the work of Douglas Adams, if you like the way Douglas works and are famili
ar with the way he works, then you’ll love it too, the only real shame it that Dirk is such a great character and now that Douglas has passed away we shall see no more of him. Except in a movie of course, if they ever make one..........

The Solid Grey

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