Why did I love this book?
Looking through the small ads in the back of my parentsā newspaper (we got really bored before the internet), I saw one for a holistic detective agency ā āmissing cats and messy divorces a specialityā. My sister dared me to call. When I did, I heard a message saying, āThis is Dirk Gently. If youād like to leave a message, you canāt.ā It then revealed the existence of the book, which of course I bought.
Itās my favourite Douglas Adams: set in the real world, but standing at a finely calculated distance from reality. Thereās the character whoās killed early on, but continues regardless. Thereās the software that tells you why itās a good idea to do whatever it is you want to do (the Pentagon uses an outdated version). Thereās the sofa that gets wedged in a staircase in contravention of all known physics.
Then thereās Dirk himself, a living enigma who spends much of the book eating pizza. And thereās his immortal phrase āthe fundamental interconnectedness of all thingsā, which allows him to search for a missing cat by, for example, going on holiday to Spain.
The book was, and remains, a magical thing.
6 authors picked Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
From Douglas Adams, the legendary author of one of the most beloved science fiction novels of all time, The Hitchhikerās Guide to the Galaxy, comes a wildly inventive novel of ghosts, time travel, and one detectiveās mission to save humanity from extinction.
DIRK GENTLYāS HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY
We solve the whole crime
We find the whole person
Phone today for the whole solution to your problem
(Missing cats and messy divorces a specialty)
Douglas Adams, the āmaster of wacky words and even wackier talesā (Entertainment Weekly) once again boggles the mind with a completely unbelievable story of ghosts, time travel,ā¦