Friday 27 April 2012

Book review: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1)Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Douglas Adams is a superb writer. That much is evident from whatever you read of his. I'd read Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy and absolutely adored it. Adams makes you laugh out loud and makes complicated ideas or stories simple and believable when they shouldn't be!
This was the problem I had with this book. I was on board for the ghost, the electric monk and his horse, even for the time travel, but the space ship for me was a step too far. I know that's a completely absurd thing to say, but I just think Adams took it too far to a stage where I was actually bored a didn't care. In fact I skipped quite a bit towards the end.
It took far to long for the reader to meet Dirk Gently as well. In fact, the book was really about Richard and his various problems. Richard was a brilliant loveable character who struggled with several things including wrapping his head around the whole concept. Dirk on the other hand was a bit of an arse. He spent the majority of the last third of the book sulking because someone beat him to an idea.
In the end I'm quite glad that I watched the series first because I loved it. Stephen Mangan is a fantastic Dirk Gently that can be an arse and loveable and Darren Boyd is a brilliant Richard MacDuff who bumbles through the case, trying to clear up Dirk's mistakes. I don't think I'll be reading another unfortunately.
Just a quick note. Adams is brilliant with dialogue and he has a wonderful sense of imagination.

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