The long dark tea-time of the soul.

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Douglas Adams: The long dark tea-time of the soul. (1989, Guild Publishing)

246 pages

English language

Published Nov. 6, 1989 by Guild Publishing.

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4 stars (1 review)

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a 1988 humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book by Adams featuring private detective Dirk Gently, the first being Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It was followed by the Salmon of Doubt, an incomplete Dirk Gently novel included in a posthumous collection of the same name. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul has been adapted for radio, and several plot lines appear in the 2010 BBC TV series.

24 editions

Great for Adams's fans, a bit stretched for the normal people.

4 stars

Surreal, but a bit jumbled. I liked it, but could have been a short story.

The topic discussed the most was the topic of cheating the systems' constraints and the backlash of consequences.

It's somewhere between 3¹/₂ and 4, but I'm giving it 4 because it is seriously underrated. Of course, it's less of a banger compared to the first book, but there's no need to go Gentle Giant fan on it.

Gentle Giant was a British progressive rock band that released a number of albums so novel and captivating, almost nobody have understood them. But those who did, at least to a degree, got very upset when they have started making music that was just good, if not a little poppy. It led to the bands eventual demise.

Granted, Douglas Adams neither cares, nor cared for the people calling his works "rambling" or his thinking too shallow (or indeed …