Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I liked the book but I hate the app. This darn app won’t let me replay the last chapter. Why is this Everand??

Watch the series when it first came out and didn’t realize till season 2 that it was from these novels. So I tracked this down.
Just as bizarre as the show was. Although this had nothing to do with the show, they both had the same vibes. Both were comical and very much sci-fi. I will be continuing this series.

This is the book that introduced me to Douglas Adams. I got this from a coffee shop that sells some used books, because I recognized his name from Neil Gaiman's blog. I'm so glad I did! The book is hilarious, even ridiculous, and so much fun to read! It made me laugh out loud in several parts, and I thoroughly enjoyed the two novels.

I hadn't read this been since high school, so I wanted to give it another spin. This seems to be an abridged version, cutting out a lot of jokes and maybe some plot details? I remember it being longer and funnier.

Everything about it was refreshing— I needed a break from depressing, predictable stuff

Fun short comedy. Nice dose of Adams quirky wit that makes seemingly trivial things into funny plot twists.

A great narration that kept my attention with the fascinating story line. One of those books that deserve a second listen!

Original story is amazing and my solid favourite. However, this version is badly butchered and a lot of good stuff simply left out.

An amusing vignette from one of the kookiest minds out there. This is not in league with HGG, but it’s a fun few hours of weird escapism.

A highly amusing romp about the interconnectedness of all things, time travel, and robot monks. You'll be laughing all the way through and it's read by the master himself :)

I had read this before in college, and thought it wasn't as good as the Hitchhiker's Guide books. This time I listened to the radio play version and felt much the same. It has that satirical British humor of course, and the absurdity you expect from Adams, but I thought that the different plot threads were hard to follow and the whole thing was just a bit too far on the absurd scale to be completely enjoyable. However, this was definitely preferable to The Cuckoo's Calling as far as private eye books go. I just couldn't get into that one. Dirk Gently was entertaining and had a Doctor Who vibe that kept me interested.

One of the most annoying things about reading the Kindle edition of this book was the fact that popular highlights show up and you can't turn them off, at least not easily. It drove me mad. It was inevitably the parts that you'd pick out as funny for yourself, not anything surprisingly good...

Anyway, I grew up with Douglas Adams' work in the background, on the radio while we ate or while me and my sister played after dinner and my dad tried to relax. He's a big Douglas Adams fan, though he sticks mostly to the radio stuff, thinking that has more life.

I do enjoy Douglas Adams' writing, but I didn't find Dirk Gently as compulsive to read as Hitchhiker's Guide. There were a lot of good bits -- things I might pull out as memorable quotes -- but it didn't come out that memorably as a whole. The quotes are memorable without the story surrounding them. They're sort of bon mots that felt sort of pasted in, for the most part.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, and it was excellent train reading: entertaining without needing my full focus.

Great wit. Story still worked. But it was too short. Abridged version doesn’t do Adams’ story justice.

I've only read the first Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, but I've read both Dirk Gently novels and for some odd reason, I love them more than the HHG. Don't get me wrong. HHG is great. I fell in love with Adams when I read it. But there is some kind of genius behind Dirk Gently, especially in the first novel "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency." You have to pay attention in this book because EVERYTHING MATTERS. And it's not hard to pay attention because every word of it is engaging and funny and out there while still somehow managing to stay grounded in a semblance of reality. It's not quite as out there as HHG because it mostly takes place in England, and I think the balance between realism and fantastic is finely wrought. If you have no idea why something is there, you will, and it won't matter to you how long it takes to get to that knowledge because so many amazing things are happening meanwhile."The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" is also a very good book, and it brings in some mythology which always hits my "awesome" button. Everything matters in this book as well. And I just have to say: Coke machien. But I have to be honest and say the first is my absolute favorite.For anyone who likes to laugh: READ THESE BOOKS!

In Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency the end of the world is stopped when Dirk manages to stop a the secret behind the whole of human history coming out and ending the world. But it was close....it meant getting the horse out of a bathroom, searching for the ghost of the murdered IT company owner and why is there a sofa stuck in a stairwell???In The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul after a passenger desk at Heathrow is blown up many groups take responsibility. However what if it wasn't blown up but.......attacked by a fireball from an angry god maybe???? If so why do they want to destroy a check in desk. And who is the stranger trying to get to Oslo without money, passport and is really beginning to annoy the people in the queue behind.Not as good as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy but definately a good giggle!

The Dirk Gently series was Douglas Adams' other science fiction series apart from his more famous "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." This edition contains both Dirk Gently novels, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" in one fat hardcover edition. Although I'm normally not a fan of omnibus editions for novels, since there are only two rather short-ish (about 250 pages) novels in the series, the omnibus works well in this case. And since both books are quite fantastic, you'll want them both, anyways.Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:It's difficult to sum up this book. Despite being less outrageously insane and more down to Earth - or at least, Earth-centric - than Adams' more famous "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, there's still a whole big general mish-mash of things going on here.Let's see - we have the Electric Monk, who is programmed to believe anything, even "things that they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City." There are two ghosts - one human, one not. There's an eccentric old college don. Quantum physics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Time travel. A botched alien invasion. A rather amusing bit about a horse in a bathroom. An immovable sofa. And, just for good measure, a dodo. And, of course, on top of all this we have the title character - Dirk Gently. He's a self-proclaimed "Holistic Detective" determined to find the"whole solution" to the "whole problem" mainly through a complex system of detecting and triangulating vectors of interconnectedness of all things. And if this often means tracing them to a beach in the Bahamas all in the name of finding one little old lady's missing cat, then so be it! (Wait till you see the bill for his services!) You might think he's exploiting gullible old ladies, but don't worry - they never actually pay him. Gently is over-the-top, obnoxious, insane and very, very entertaining. It's probably best though, that he's not the viewpoint character of the novel (that role is reserved for a more Everyman-ish computer programmer) but Gently certainly steals the scene whenever he does appear.It must be a testament to Adams' genius that he can take all these disparate events and *really* find an interconnectedness to them to tie the plot together in a satisfying way at the end. If you're a Samuel Taylor Coleridge fan you'll find even more to enjoy in this. Also, of course, the whole thing is absolutely hilarious. If this is you're first time reading anything by Douglas Adams' you'll quickly see that he's got some wonderfully funny turns of phrase and a knack for humorous observations. He's also got a penchant for wonderfully mad characters. All in all this is a greatly enjoyable read. Highly recommended. One of my favorites 5/5The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul:Has a great title. Has Dirk Gently, who is always enormous fun to read about. Has Norse gods, an out-of-order soft drink machine, an exploded airport terminal, and a dirty fridge.Still completely enjoyable to read, this novel loses something when compared to the first, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" - the conclusion was less satisfying and it seemed to "lose steam" towards the ending. Still a great read, however. Very fun, humorous and entertaining. Also, you know how people are said to only use about ten percent of their brain? Turns out the rest is full of penguins. (4/5)

I think it would have gotten more stars if Adams didn't take almost the entire book for any action to happen. And we don't even meet Dirk Gently until the second half of the book.

I do think that this could be hilarious in the way Dr.Who is hilarious, as a tv show...but as a book I kept falling asleep. Some of it was funny but mostly I just kept thinking that Adams should just get to the point and stop trying to force goofy on me every two lines.

Maybe I'll try #2 but I'll probably just watch the BBC show.

I adored this book, the reading was great and the writing style is funny and witty. A good time!

Don’t purchase this, it’s the abridged version!!! It leaves out a lot of the plot!

A little dense at times but I enjoyed listening to it.

Abridged books are against my religion. If it were the whole book I'd give it 5 stars.

The real reading of this book by Douglas Adams is well over 6 hours long. Unfortunately, this HEAVILY abridged version is barely over 3 hours long. You get the gist of the story but missing ALL of the nuances; no secretary at Dirk's office, no Schrodinger discussion, no expanded story of Michael Whenton-Weakes. Very disappointing.

I loved it! Definitely my kind of mystery and comedy!

This books contains "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul". I enjoyed reading both of these again. As books in some ways these are better than Adams' better known Hitchikers books.

Good, but the Hitchhiker's Guide is far better.

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we not eff it after all."This book is Douglas Adams' take on detective fiction in which Sherlock Holmes meets Doctor Who, quantum theory meets time travel. As with many detective stories this book features a murder and all evidence seems to point to an innocent man, Richard. Enter the rather shady Dirk Gently, ex Cambridge undergraduate, last seen in police custody some years previously, now running a holistic detective agency. Holistic because it is based on the interconnectedness of all things, any event in the space-time continuum can connect to any other. Adams therefore assembles a wonderfully madcap collection of people, things and events, and weaves them into this imaginatively playful romp. Normally TOO MANY coincidences would have the reader rolling their eyes with frustration but here it just seems to work, it's fun to see what gets linked together.Now I'm sure that this is a Marmite book, you will either love or loathe it. If you enjoyed Adams whimsical style in his better known 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' then you are already well on the road to enjoying this one, if not, then it's unlikely to convert you. Personally, whilst I didn't actually laugh out loud, I found it a very clever piece of writing that left me with a smile on my face and that as far as I'm concerned can be no bad thing.

I've never read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I did enjoy the television series, so I was pleased to see that our library had the BBC Radio 4 dramatization of the book. It's quite different from the show, but funny as was Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.Dirk Gently (not his real name) does have certain unusual abilities, but his detective practice mostly involves finding old ladies' lost cats. His secretary, Janice Pearce, wants to be paid, as does Gently himself. Richard Macduff, a former classmate of Dirk's at Cambridge, is in a lot of trouble because he is suspected of having murdered his employer, Gordon Way. Richard's girlfriend his Gordon's sister, Susan Way. Susan has a socially awkward acquaintance (I would hardly call him a friend) named Michael Wenton Weakes. Michael will prove quite useful to one of the book's ghosts. Professor Reg Chronotis is more than he seems. Detective Sergeant Gilks is not the brightest copper on the force, but Macduff fears him. The Electric Monk is an android with a built-in-need to believe. His best scene is when DS Gilks is interrogating him. I don't know if fans of the book will enjoy this, but this fan of the show did. I would recommend it to fans of science fiction humor and mysteries.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency tells the tale of an Electric Monk, an old college professor who's apparently paid to do nothing, a computer programmer whose software makes music out of accounting figures, his overbearing and eccentric boss, his sensible but nearly fed-up girlfriend, and, of course, a private detective who swears that because of the fundamental interconnectedness of everything, it's perfectly reasonable to attempt to charge people for trips to Bermuda in search of their lost cats. When the eccentric boss is unexpectedly gunned down and the programmer seems to be the police's top suspect, Dirk takes his new client on a wild adventure to clear his name, discover the true culprit, and maybe even save the world. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Dirk Gently does not eliminate the impossible, and in this case he might just be onto something.Douglas Adams is an author well known for his humorous and light-hearted writing style, and this book was no exception. Although he's better known for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, I found the two Dirk Gently books (this one and the sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) to be easier to enjoy, as I personally had a difficult time getting over the fact that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens with the destruction of Earth. Don't get me wrong, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy still got a few good laughs out of me, but the Dirk Gently books are more my cup of tea.Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency starts out very slowly and requires a good deal of patience and concentration before it really starts to ramp up, in my opinion, but I found that when I did give it that focus I was very much rewarded. In fact, this is the sort of book where the astute reader can pick up on vital clues and get the satisfaction of seeing all the pieces fall in place by the ending. It rewards the reader who goes slowly and enjoys every little humor-laced paragraph along the way. And for me, one of the main attractions is that it did make me smile throughout rather than getting dragged down into sadness while the characters faced their struggles. Certainly, it's important to read books on serious topics, but there's also such a thing as too much. Sometimes all you want is to balance it all out with a book that just makes you feel good. This is that kind of book. I recommend it to anyone else who's looking for the same.

This is about my 3rd re-read, as I read it when it first came out, I have always love Adams and actually prefer Dirk over HHGTTG.

Time travel and electronic monks and ghosts and psychic-not-psychic detectives and couches stuck on stairwells. So, you know, the usual thing for Adams. Meaning it's an absolute hoot and highly recommended.