Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams set aside the galactic register of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to write something more compact, weirder, and arguably funnier. Dirk Gently runs a private detective agency in London on the principle of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, which means he charges astronomical fees, never seems to be working on the case you hired him for, and yet somehow always sends you the right invoice in the end. The plot folds Coleridge's Kubla Khan, time travel, an Electric Monk that believes things on its owner's behalf, a stranded ghost trying to retroactively unkill his rocket-passenger contemporaries, and a sofa permanently stuck on a Cambridge staircase into one elegant whole. Adams's first non-Hitchhiker novel turned out to be the start of a small but devoted second series and one of the most fondly remembered comic mysteries of the 1980s.
Where Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency keeps showing up
Two of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Also by Douglas Adams
What you might want to know about Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Slightly fraudulent investigator Dirk Gently insists nothing is unconnected. A Cambridge professor's missing cat, an electric monk, a stuck sofa on a staircase, and a four-billion-year-old ghost all turn out to be the same case.
Douglas Adams completed two Dirk Gently novels: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. An unfinished third novel, The Salmon of Doubt, was published posthumously in 2002 alongside other writings.
Yes. Two adaptations exist: a 2010 BBC series starring Stephen Mangan, and a 2016 BBC America and Netflix series titled Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency starring Samuel Barnett. The two are unconnected and take very different approaches to the source.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was written by Douglas Adams, published in 1987 by Gallery Books.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is 278 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a standalone novel by Douglas Adams, not part of a series.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
