Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Rating: 4/5 stars

I have no idea how to start a plot summary for this book. If you’ve read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, then you know how unique Adam’s train of thought is. Unlike his other series, this book does actually have a continuous plot that was fairly easy to follow. The main storyline follows a man named Robert, who the police believe murdered his boss. Robert finds himself asking Dirk Gently and his “holistic detective agency” for help to prove him innocent. Dirk, while trying to help Robert, believes there is much more to this case than a simple misunderstanding. He’s set off to find the answer to life. Also, there is an electric monk stranded in the desert and I have no idea why his tangent storyline was included in the book…

I didn’t enjoy this book for the plot. I found it boring and easy to skim. What I did like was trying to understand how Douglas Adams’ brain works. He has the most unconventional ways of describing things and his sentences sometimes seem like the plugged a bunch of words into a “random sentence generator” and pressed enter.

It’s hard for me to compare anything to The HItchhiker’s Guide, because it is my all-time favorite series. Like I said, this book certainly has a more tangible plot than the other, but I don’t think it was as fun to read for that very reason. None of the characters are particularly likable, which adds to my mere 4 star rating. I do own the second book in this series and may give it a try next month. Both of my Dirk Gently books are vintage edition which, for some reason, makes me more inclined to read them.