Forget the clumsy recent TV adaptation and go back to the original books. Dirk is, unlike Sherlock Holmes, a detective who never eliminates the impossible. Cue hilarious mishaps and a meandering way to get to the truth or the culprit.

If you like Douglas Adams try Malcolm Pryce
Maxim Jakubowski recommends: Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce

Synopsis

Dirk Gently is a detective - well, a sort of detective. There is a long and honourable tradition of great detectives and Dirk Gently does not belong to it. Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Dirk Gently, however, does not like to eliminate the impossible.In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency a simple search for a missing cat reveals two ghosts, a dodo, an Electric Monk, the devastating secret that lies behind the whole of human history and threatens to bring it to a premature close, and, finally, the utterly terrifying reason why Richard MacDuff has had a sofa stuck on his stairs for three weeks.As The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul opens a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shoots up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame. The usual people try to claim responsibility. However, no rational cause can be found for the explosion - it was simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo?

About the Author

Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and created all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer game, stage adaptation, comic book and bath towel. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published thirty years ago......on 12 October 1979 and its phenomenal success sent the book straight to number one in the UK bestseller list. In 1984 Douglas Adams became the youngest author to be awarded a Golden Pan. His series has sold over 15 million books in the UK, the US and Australia and was also a bestseller in German and many other languages. The feature film starring Martin Freeman and Zooey Deschanel with Stephen Fry as the Guide was released in 2005 using much of Douglas’s original script and ideas. Douglas lived with his wife and daughter in Islington, North London, and briefly in California, where he died in 2001. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation