Dirk Gently's Holisitc Detective Agency

As I keep likening my writing style to that of Douglas Adams (at least, when I haven't been temporarily brainwashed to write like a victorian novelist, or a rough and tumble cowpoke, or a just the facts ma'am detective, or a swingin' 60's Stan Lee from Amazing Spider-Man- now THAT was a fun week!) I decided to give some more of his work a read. Thus, "Dirk Gently's Holisitic Detective Agency".

Of course this wasn't the only reason I looked it up, nay! I figure I first came upon the title during any of a number of Doctor Who binges on tvtropes.org. Apparently Douglas Adams was commissioned to write a Doctor Who, well, either novel or episode or movie or whatever. But it was never made! Spoooky! The story was called "Shada" for some reason that I don't know. But it turns out that story was turned into this Dirk Gently book, and certainly goes to explaining the presence of the time travelling professor that figures into the plot.

Figuring less into the plot, unfortunately, was Dirk Gently himself! If memory serves he was only vaguely mentioned until appearing around the hundred page mark. Or else he only gets mentioned at the hundred page mark and doesn't even then appear. It's one of those. Again, it's been a while since I read the thing.

Gently is a character that proposes the "interconnectedness of all things", at least that's how he explains charging his client for a trip to Bermuda when he's looking for her lost cat. He's a con man and a lout, who get's played up like a modern day Sherlock Holmes- especially when he deduces the answer to one particularly unsolvable riddle is the existence of a time machine. And of course he's bang on correct.

The Watson of the story is an eccentric genius in his own right, working with those newfangled "computer programs" and whatnot (written in the 80's). He's a likable enough guy, it's just frustrating to have him as the central character for most of the novel only to get railroaded by Gently, who is never explored enough to make me care about him. So it's like the story stops but the novel keeps going.

Worst of all, the ending ramps up to a ghost getting taken back to prehistory to end all of human life, and is essentially stopped off page. End of novel. I found it hugely anticlimactic.

Reading the reviews for the book on tvtropes, it's all raves. I like the one guy that was like "I just got it- and this was brilliant mind you- but the electric monk was actually from an alien planet, and was made in such a way that it happened to look entirely human!"

And I'm just sitting here going "duh, yes, that was indeed what was described in the book."

Shee-eesh.