Fiction 07 Oct 2004 02:21 pm
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams
Well, how can I put this… if you’ve already read anything by Douglas Adams, you probably have a good idea about what this one is like. If you haven’t, there’s nothing I can do to really explain it. It’s, well, kind of surreal, but in an utterly logical way.
I guess a quick plot description is in order. Some spoilers may be in this description, but I don’t think it’s anything that would detract from anyone’s enjoyment of this book. This is a mystery novel, as can be guessed from the title. A murder mystery, to be more exact. The person who is killed is a software millionaire (this book was written in the mid 1980s), and one of his employees, Richard, is the main suspect, for several reasons. Dirk Gently is a detective and an old friend of Richard’s, and he’s trying to help him. Not by finding out who is the killer, mind you, but by finding out why he was climbing a third-floor window in the middle of the night for no good reason.
In the end, several other characters join up, including Richard’s girlfriend (and sister of the victim), a very old professor, an Electric Monk and his horse, the victim’s ghost, a disgruntled former magazine editor who is more than he seems to be, a 19th century poet and a cat. It’s a very cool story and, in the end, all the loose ends are tied beautifully, as only Douglas Adams could do.
The cat, sadly, dies.
