This was quite a fun read. Douglas Adams is mostly famous for the Hitchiker's Guides books and thus, a lot of his other work tend to be overlooked. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is one such instance.

You can't even begin to explain the gist of the story. The story is full of absolutely mad, but at the same time delightfully human, characters. Now throw in a plot-line that seems to unravel into disjointed loose ends as you further progress into the story. Of course, it all comes together in the end and then you can't think of any other possible way that story could have been wrapped up.

For instance, you get Richard MacDuff, the jittery and impressionable programmer, who is having a tough time with his boss, who in turn is his girlfriend's brother. How convoluted is that? He has a tough time juggling his time between his personal life and work load and thus, one fine night he finds himself breaking into his girlfriend's home. This was to delete a message that was work-related. In the midst of this, he gets caught out by someone with a good view of the apartment who, by the way, is his old school chum, Dirk Gently. Gently was a bit of a con-artist who now reels in money doing pseudo-science explorations. That reminds me, something terrible happened to MacDuff's boss and somehow his old college professor is the only one who can help. It is a small world after all.

That is my own weird summary of the plot. I was hoping not to give away too much so excuse the strange sub-plot connections. It will all make sense once you read the book. And then you will either be relieved I didn't give away too much or rather angry that I inadvertently gave away a big part of the story.

Like I said before, this book was a good read; it was funny and engaging, as is typical of Adams' work. I don't know about other readers but I keep comparing his work to Pratchett and Rankin. It's not so much the theme as their approach to language and certain situations. I noticed that all of them love innovations and technology and this will be evident from a lot of their books. Technological references may not seem as progressive in the Dirk Gently book but readers might want to keep in mind that this book was first published in 1987 before computer technology was widely used by mainstream public.

Another common way of thinking is their character depiction. These authors have a habit of creating rather human, flawed characters who, in real life, would be running down the street after conning you of a month's worth of rent. In this book, it is Dirk Gently whose scams are far-fetched and silly and yet, at some point, you end up appreciating the genius behind the man's thinking. Well, I won't say anymore; check out the book for yourself.