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The investigations of Dirk Gently, a private detective who is more interested in telekinesis, quantum mechanics and lunch than fiddling around with fingerprint powders, produce startling and unexpected results.
I'd already seen both tv shows on this before reading the book, although I usually do it the other way around. I enjoyed both shows and the book, although they're all quite different. this has the same sort of humour as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, although this possibly has a bit more emotional weight or something along those lines. i liked the characters, and i think dirk gently is actually quite a relatable character in some ways, maybe. this was fairly philosophical possibly, and it had a strange theme or motif or symbol or something of telephones, although im not quite sure what it was trying to say about them. it was funny and interesting and i enjoyed it as much as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, if not more. I didn't fully understand all the references but i think i understood most of the plot, at least in general terms. this also seems to have elements similar to the doctor who story city of death which was also written by adams, and this even has an long lived time-traveller in it ( )
Basically the same old Douglas Adams nonsense, which, if you picked up the book, you probably already expected and, in fact, enjoy. So. It was very Douglas Adams-y. ( )
A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic -The author
Dedication
To my mother, who liked the bit about the horse
Janet Thrift
First words
This time there would be no witnesses.
Quotations
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
'Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see?'
If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.
The investigations of Dirk Gently, a private detective who is more interested in telekinesis, quantum mechanics and lunch than fiddling around with fingerprint powders, produce startling and unexpected results.
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Book description
Wikipedia description: Dirk bills himself as a "holistic detective" who makes use of "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" to solve the whole crime, and find the whole person. This involves running up large expense accounts and then claiming that every item (such as needing to go to a tropical beach in the Bahamas for three weeks) was, due to the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things", actually a vital part of the investigation. Challenged on this point in the first novel, he claims that he cannot in fairness be considered to have ripped anybody off, because none of his clients have paid him yet. He maintains an office at 33a Peckender St. N1 London, with telephone number 01-354 9112 (407-2882 in the advertising campaign for the book). Gently has an odd facility for accurate assumptions, as every wild guess he makes turns out to be true. Once a student at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge, he left in disgrace when he attempted to acquire money by selling exam papers for the upcoming tests. His fellow students were convinced that he had produced the papers under hypnosis—in reality, he had simply studied previous papers and determined potential patterns in the questions. However when his papers turned out to be exactly the same as the real papers, to the very comma, he was arrested and sent to prison.
Haiku summary
Dirk Gently says: 'All things are fundamentally interconnected.' (passion4reading)
Your usual, run- of-the-mill detective-time travel-ghost story. (passion4reading)