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Hannah

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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1)

by Douglas Adams

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read in January 2014

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Hannah said: " Richard MacDuff is a fairly ordinary man, if one considers fairly ordinary men to be absurdly thin and heronlike in gait.
Richard is a computer programmer working at a successful British software company, WayForward Technologies II. He is at a point Richard MacDuff is a fairly ordinary man, if one considers fairly ordinary men to be absurdly thin and heronlike in gait.
Richard is a computer programmer working at a successful British software company, WayForward Technologies II. He is at a point in his life where his main problems are meeting a deadline creating an updated version of a program he developed, accidentally forgetting to pick up his girlfriend, and having a Chesterfield sofa stuck in the middle of the stairwell leading to his flat. Though he is not aware of it, Richard is about to have larger problems than irrevocably wedged furniture.
Through a rather bizarre series of events involving a horse materializing in a bathroom and a saltcellar being impossibly placed in a vase, his employer, Gordon Way, is murdered and Richard is apparently the prime suspect. Dirk Gently, a Holistic Detective, (whose specialties are messy divorces and missing cats) takes Richard as his client and the two work to uncover the mystery of Gordon Way’s death, and seek to discover the truth behind the aforementioned bizarre events using methods including hypnosis, possession, and making “a lot of meaningless squiggles done in blue felt tip on a piece of typing paper.”
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is extremely funny, and possesses an intriguing and very unpredictable plot. As the title implies, holism plays a key role in the novel. Holism is the belief that everything is interconnected, and everything is part of a whole.
The story is told by a very talented writer, who has written numerous other bestsellers in addition to Dirk Gently. The author somehow is able to make the story and setting almost real, almost tangible – despite the fact that much of the events are impossible (at least without much technological advancement) and somewhat controversial. Even its characters, odd as the individuals may be, are brought to life in such a way that makes one wonder if they were indeed made up entirely from the author’s seemingly infinite imagination.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is the first novel in a series of just two finished books, and fits a wide range of genres including science fiction, fantasy, and, of course, comedy. After all, Douglas Adams is a master of wit in his writing – a fact which is made evident throughout the novel with strange concepts such as irreversible mathematics involving pieces of furniture.
On the whole, the novel is very much like another of Adams’ works, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They feature the same type of imaginative humor. The main characters of both books are very similar – awkward, and somewhat absent-minded. However, unlike the Guide, Dirk Gently does not involve much space travel and instead focuses more on the supernatural.
Without a doubt, fans of Doctor Who would enjoy this book and any other samples of Adams’ writing. As a matter of fact, Adams wrote Doctor Who scripts in the 1970s. Those who enjoy science fiction would also enjoy this book very much.
I found Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency to be immensely funny, not to mention intriguing and suspenseful. I am always amazed by Adams’ ability to end his stories in ways that are completely unexpected and yet make perfect sense. Events in the beginning, which may seem irrelevant or isolated, are later revealed to be key elements of the plot. I have read a total of six novels by Adams and have yet to read a predictable ending. That is my favorite thing about Adams' writing – that it’s impossible to predict what will happen next. I also enjoy the little tidbits of information he includes in his stories, facts that it is unlikely for many people to know – such as the fact that Isaac Newton was the inventor of the catflap.
In conclusion, I found Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency to be ingeniously written, funny, entertaining and, in fact, educational. I would certainly recommend it to others, especially if they enjoy science fiction. ...more "

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— Jan 18, 2014 06:36PM

Jan 18, 2014 06:34PM · see review

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