Rating: 
Summary: Hands down, the best book Ive ever read
Review: I have read this book so many times I've lost count. Lets see now: The character portrayal is brilliant, Adams' humour is the kind that makes you laugh out aloud - in fact the humour achieved in this novel is unparalleled, the plot is delightfully complex and fascinating, the story is well-paced and makes you want to read read read, Dirk is utterly hilarious, and Adams' style of writing and mastery of wordplay has never been more evident.
Sometimes I'll read a passage over and over, not because I dont understand it but because it's so well written that I just about cant believe it. This book truly is a mental stimulation that you wont forget in a hurry, an absolute treat, and if I ever had to choose one book to be stranded on an island with, this would be it. Of course I would stash a few nudie books down the back of my pants as well, the authorities wouldn't notice.5 STARS IS NOT ENOUGH for this book!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Better than HHTTG
Review: I finally found a used hardcover edition in pure mint condition at a used bookstore, nowhere else having it. And then I finally read it. Very slow at first, I almost gave up on reading it, but it builds slowly. Slowly. Dirk doesn't even appear until 5/8ths into the book, but that's okay. All that matters is that this book is simply incredible. I tend to catch things very quickly (like movies that say you should see it twice to get it, I get it the first time), so I got the entire book and story immediately and loved it. Not to mention it's extremely witty and well informed, where Douglas Adams got all the music ideas and fractal stuff from is of no clue to me, but it amazed me also. Just get this book for the fact that Douglas Adams' intelligence will frighten you after you read HHGTTG. Douglas Adams' has written something I'd never expect from the writer of the HHGTTG series. A very deep thinking, yet rather humorous, book. In his very remarkable comedic style. Time to read the sequel!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Mediocrity
Review: Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Douglas Adam's writing, is that there will not be any more. This book offers solace to those seeking Adam's wit beyond the hitch hiker series. While the general plot is at times annoyingly insane, the character development is priceless. A must read for any classic Adams fan, if only for just the revealing look into the digital world of the 1980s.
Rating: 
Summary: Gets points for trying to be different, but is average
Review: "Dirk Gently's Holistic Dectective Agency" is an OK book. It is a different kind of mystery, as Douglas Adams intended. However, I found this book quite inferior to the "Hitchhiker" series, as it did not have that same pizzaz. Basically, there has been a murder, and some try to solve it. Dirk, the detective in the title who doens't appear until about 1/2 way through, is not interested in solving the murder, no, he wants to know why Richard McDuff, an employee of the victim, climbed into his girlfriend's flat. That McDuff's girlfriend is the victim's sister is beside the point. Dirk feels that all things are interconnected, and also wants to figure out how an old professor managed to do an impossible trick. Soon, we discover, the prof has a time machine, and there is a ghost who wants to reverse a billion year old error, which would mean the end of all life. A few chuckles, but mostly headscratching.
Rating:
Summary: The *Other* Douglas Adams Saga
Review: The oddball detective Dirk Gently and his "client" Richard MacDuff go on an investigation to solve a murder, AND save the human race from extinction as well....No one could've expected Douglas Adams to write nothing but "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" books his entire life, and so, in 1987, he began a new series of books centered around a *very* unconventional detective named Dirk Gently, who uses his belief "in the interconnectedness of all things" to solve crimes. His introductory adventure, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency," is a very different creation altogether from the popular "Hitchhiker's Guide" books. Like it says on the back cover, "Dirk Gently" is a combination of ghost, horror, detective, time-travel, and romantic comedy. The results are mixed---the book takes a while to get going (Dirk Gently himself does not physically appear for a LONG time), the story is confusing at times, and it just isn't laugh-out-loud funny like the majority of the "Hitchhiker's" series. But "Dirk Gently" still has it's amusing moments, including the plight of Gordon Way, Richard's relationship with his cello-playing girlfriend, Susan, and Dirk hypnotising Richard into doing something that, for me, was totally unexpected and very, very funny (but I won't spoil it for you). Also, as a fan of the popular sci-fi series, "Doctor Who," which Adams wrote some stories for, I was also delighted to see the appearance of Professor "Reg" Chronotis, a character from Adams' "Doctor Who" story, "Shada," who plays an important role here as well.Unfortunately, Adams gives "Dirk Gently" an ending that only raises more questions than it gives answers. Besides not making any sense (well, not to me, anyway), the ending feels hastily written, as if Adams was racing against the clock to meet a deadline with his publishers, couldn't come up with a *plausible* way for Dirk to save the day, and so, he scribbled down a nonsense scene to end Dirk's adventure with. And also, what happened to the Electric Monk, or Michael Wenton-Weakes? Adams doesn't say. So, in the end, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" is a very mixed bag, but I'm going to give it 3 out of 5 stars because it's still a pretty amusing book, with some pretty amusing characters, and I AM curious to see where Adams takes Dirk next. Alright then, onto the second Dirk Gently book, "The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul".... :-)
Rating:
Summary: A book on the fundamental interconnectedness of all things
Review: Having finished with the Hitchhiker's series with So Long And Thanks For The Fish, Douglas Adams created a diptych utilizing the character of Dirk Gently, an eccentric character who in this first novel creates the self-titled Holistic Detective Agency. His method does not involve using fingerprint powder, but rather seeing the fundamental interconnectedness of things. As he elaborates to a client, "I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose." Missing cats is a specialty, using Schrodinger's quantum mechanics equation. It also serves to exploit old woman seeking their missing cats of their money, that is if he ever gets paid. Gently cross paths with his old classmate from St. Cedd's College, Cambridge, Richard MacDuff, who is having a trying and interesting time. MacDuff, a computer programmer working for Way Forward Technologies, becomes involved with his old college tutor, Professor Urban Chronotis, the aged Regius Professor of Chronology, and hence bearing the nickname "Reg" whose vice is conjuring tricks, and in the middle of a dinner honouring Samuel Taylor Coleridge, performs a totally inexplicable one involving a salt shaker and a Grecian pot that perplexes MacDuff. Equally perplexing is how a horse entered the bathroom of his professor. MacDuff has many other things to worry about. He's overdue on a software programme for his boss Gordon Way, he isn't spending enough time with his girlfriend Susan, who's his boss's sister, and he's got a sofa lodged halfway up the stairs to his flat. To make matters worse, he then sees the ghost of his boss, who was mysteriously killed at the same time he was at the Coleridge dinner, and is wanted by the police for questioning. Adams' usual humorous observations on human foibles are at play here. He describes Reg's memory as being comparable to a Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly, "in that it was colorful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct." Reg and the eccentric Dirk, who seems able to explain things MacDuff can't, are the best characters here. As for MacDuff, there is some of Adams in this character. Like MacDuff, Adams attended Cambridge and went for an English Literature degree, only it was at St. John's College and not St. Cedd's per the novel. Adams also managed to turn in only three essays (!!), which was three more than MacDuff completed. Some may know that Adams was the script-editor for Dr. Who from 1978-1979. Elements from two stories he personally wrote, City Of Death and Shada pop up here. In the latter story, there is a character called Professor Chronotis as there is here. The humour is more tempered than in Hitchhiker, and relies more on wit and funny situations rather than the laugh-out-loud comedy of the HH series. And this is more a sci-fi/mystery rather than a meta-scifi comedy in space. Adams never loses his imaginative streak, in terms of story and writing style. I read this immediately after the last HH book and found it an amusing and entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: A ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic
Review: This is a very strange book. Adams himself has described it as a "ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics." It's hard to know who the main character really is. The title character, Dirk Gently, doesn't even appear in the story until almost a hundred pages into the book, and until that time, it seems that the story is really about computer programmer Richard MacDuff. But there are also ghosts involved, an Electric Monk from another world, an over 200-year old professor of chronology, and much else.
The story is a murder mystery, of a sort, and the plot gradually begins to centre around Dirk Gently's holistic concept that all things are fundamentally interconnected with each other. Gently himself is a very amusing and talkative character, and the highlights of the book is whenever he appears. The concept of the Electric Monk, and its purpose for existing, is also very entertaining.
Several elements of the story were salvaged by Adams from earlier ideas he had had when he was writing a few scripts (Shada and City of Death) for the "Dr. Who" show on BBC. And the story also reflects Adams's increasing interest in computers. Another bit of noteworthy trivia is that the publishing rights for this book, and its sequel, before either of them had been written, were sold for two million dollars.
Adams stays true to form, and the book is at times very funny. The solution to the mystery is unusual, to say the least, although the ending, suddenly involving quite a bit of sci-fi, is confusing and abrupt, and it's not exactly spelled out in detail how the world was saved. It is an entertaining read, although I can't help feeling it's not quite what it could have been.
Rating:
Summary: easily Douglas Adams's best
Review: The people who say this is boring or difficult to understand are reviewing themselves, not this book. I've read this six times and loved it each time. It's intended as pure entertainment (and I can't think of a more entertaining novel), but it just so happens it is better plotted than even Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" and Milan Kundera's "Immortality", which is saying quite a lot. I'm not one of those lowbrows who go around calling pieces of genre fiction "classic", but this is close. Seven stars.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant book, and how could you expect anything different?
Review: Out of the mind of one of the world's greatest spinners of stories comes this utterly fantastic tale of parody. But don't try and put this book into a single genre: it can't be done! Is it mystery, is it suspense, is it humor? All I know is that it's great fiction!
Rating:
Summary: Dirk Gentley
Review: I just finished Douglas Adam's Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency. This was a pretty good read. Its not too in depth. It contains a lot of cynical, sarcastic, and underlying humor. Although it is definitely a science fiction book, as long as you have a decently open mind, its good. Following the odd coincidences that happen throughout the book, including a sofa in the stairwell, a horse in the bathroom, and a ghost, a tale that is so incredible it almost seems believable is revealed. The book does not really come together until the middle to end of the book, so don't get discouraged if youre terribly confused at the beginning!
|
