Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

eBook, 304 pages

English language

Published Feb. 25, 2013 by Pocket Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-4391-4061-1

(1 review)

What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a Chronologist over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), and pizza have in common?

Apparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza – not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge).

25 editions

jonn reviewed Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently, #1)

I understand why people rate it with 3 stars

5 stars

Let me get it straight: the ending is very Adamsian. I have an unsubstantiated feeling (one could say "a belief") that Douglas Adams never cared much about the endings.

The reason I'm giving it my favorite 4.5 is the pure joy of Adams capturing so many concepts from what is by now computer science folklore, but at the time of writing the book was on the forefront of software engineering. The book is written in 1987, mind you.

And perhaps that's another reason many gave it three stars. Adams, not unlike his character, really liked to talk about computers in detail.