The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams

For a long time now I have been meaning to get myself a Dirk Gently book… as a long time fan of Douglas Adams I couldn’t understand how these had slipped me by, so when I saw this sitting on the 40p shelf in a local charity shop I snatched it up! Having grown up with Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) in both TV and book format (missed out on the radio show) and generally being impressed with Adams in general… I mean this man worked on Dr Who, invented the best name in the universe ever for a character (Slartibartfast) and was generally a normal bloke with a wicked sense of humour…. I ... more

Douglas Adams has always written fine works of fiction in my opinion. This book is no exception. The Dirk Gently novels seem to take a swing in the other direction from the Hitch Hiker series; the Hitch Hiker series has always concentrated on making science fiction a lighter funnier subject, whereas the Dirk Gently novels have tried to do the same thing but looking at the real world rather than something imaginery. This time round we concentrate on Dirk's adventures rather than those of Richards (He was in the previous book). Richard has inadvertently disappeared with no real explanation, and ... more

Douglas Adams is probably best-known for the Hitchhiker Trilogy (which now consists of five books). He is less well-known for the detective Dirk Gently. Dirk Gently (real name Svlad Cjelli) is a curious person. He wears a red hat which does not suit him, is almost permanently in debt, and runs a detective agency. "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" is the second book to feature him. Naturally, as it is a detective book, I cannot explain the story, as this does not become totally clear until the end of the book. What I can say is that it starts with a mysterious explosion at a London airport ... more

This book is the second that Douglas Adams has written about Dirk Gently (the first was Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency). It was written after the 5 part trilogy(?) of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and although the humour is similar its definitely not the same sort of idea. Kate Schechter first meets the rather angry, not to mention lost, Norse god (Thor) at the check-in desk at Heathrow Airport. Kate then misses her plane to Oslo and just as she is about to leave the airport the check-in desk she and Thor were at explodes, leaving her in a bruised heap on the floor and the Norse ... more

"The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" is Adams' second novel about Dirk Gently, by which time he had in my opinion earned himself the right to call himself "novelist" rather than just "writer". Once again he succeeds in writing a genuinely funny fantasy story in a unique style, with believable characters. He manages to play the novel at its own game, and win. What is slightly incongruous in this novel is Gently himself. He begins the novel five hours late, and never quite manages to catch up. Although he deduces what exactly is going on, he is always too late to actually stop anything and the ... more