Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

The electric monk - Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency is a novel by English writer Douglas Adams, who appeared under the title Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency first 1987. Douglas Adams himself described the book as "ghost - horror - who -is- the - culprit - time machine -romance comedy - musical epic".

The continuation of the book is the long dark afternoon tea of the soul. A third part was in labor, the Adams could not finish before his death in 2001. Fragments of this work have been published in the estate tape Salmon of Doubt.

Action

The novel is divided into many storylines that have initially appear to have anything to do with each other. Only gradually did the relationships between them are revealed and in the end it turns out that each subplot for the overall logic of action was needed. The relative chronology of the events that are described below, will be apparent to the reader not before the middle of the narrative.

Richard MacDuff attended the annual banquet at his former College St. Cedds at the invitation of his old college tutor, Professor, " Reg" Chronotis. Reg behaves a little weirder than usual, apparently in an effort to discuss something with Richard, but it never really comes to it. It turns out that the sudden noise above Regs rooms are from a horse in the bathroom. For no apparent reason, this fact greatly facilitates Reg. Richard suddenly remembered the promise he had made to his girlfriend Susan: that today they would jointly undertake evening something special.

On a distant planet, a humanoid robot, called Electric Monk works through a series of nonsensical beliefs. Its sole job is to believe things ( so other people to save you the trouble of doing it themselves), but a disturbance has led to his belief system became increasingly prone to error. With a horse as a companion ejected from the civilization he believes currently that its environment is pale pink and that would lead an ordinary white door in a strange new world.

The entrepreneur Gordon Way runs a country road towards his house and talk to the answering machine of his sister. When he stops to close the trunk of his car, he was shot. His mind wonders, however, why he still exists and what he should do now.

Michael Milton Innerwoaks ( in the original: Michael Wenton - Weakes ) had received from his wealthy father getting everything he wanted. But after the death of the old man is Michael's mother proved to be a much gewissenhafterer manager managed by the family newspaper empire, as it had ever been her last husband. A spoiled young man finds that he will be suddenly taken away his expensive "toys", including his beloved money -devouring magazine. Michael offset this loss in obsessive rage.

The checkered past of Svlad Cjelli, an old classmate Richard McDuff, also includes a number of very minor ripoffs. At college, however, the attempt came to obtain treatment from his fellow students to not quite legally with free drinks and meals, something out of control and led to the arrest Cjellis. Under the new name Dirk Gently, he is now the owner and only one investigator detective agencies, which claims to exploit the fundamental interconnectedness of all things in order to solve any case. Although he produced any number of absurd arguments for his inflated expense reports, he is also very successful in tracing the truth, as unlikely as it may be.

Svlad blackmailed a meeting with Richard, as he watched this when breaking into the apartment of his girlfriend. Richard tries to delete an adverse for him message on the answering machine of his girlfriend. At the meeting hypnotized Svlad Richard to recognize the actual intentions Richards for the slump. Richard was owned at that time by a "spirit".

This spirit is the last " survivor " of an accident by aliens who wanted to populate the earth in prehistoric times. The mind tries to gain access to a time machine, which is owned by Reg. Towards the end of the book you will find the Spirit, together in the body of Michael, Reg, Svlad and Richard in the space of time machine. The mind tries to convince you that he wants to change only the passage of time, to save his shipmates the others. Just as this on the way the history is to change, remember the other, that the mind and his comrades colonize the earth and want to prevent the existence of mankind.

Richard and his friends prevent this development, for Adam's typical bizarre way: Prevent the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 to the writing of his poem Kubla Khan, which he had written under the influence of the Spirit. So mankind will finally be saved. The time machine is unusable afterwards. Other hazards are not to be feared.

Reception

The book was received mixed critical acclaim. They compared it everywhere with the Hitchhiker novels, with some voices claiming that the book would be the shrill gags contained therein are missing. Other sides praised the book and called it a better and more mature than the pickups. Common to all meetings is a fairly ambivalent impression: " Only towards the end you get the feeling that Adams either had no real desire more, or, as was already in every episode of the LHA, just in time trouble uncanny in terms of the delivery date. The many threads are resolved is (almost all), but in such a rapid manner that does not fit with the rest of the novel. "

Theme

The central motif of the novel is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Many details may at first seem superfluous, but afterwards they turn out to be integral parts of the storyline. Chaos theory is therefore an appropriate context for this novel. On the idea of holism referred to in sub - or original title of the novel. Also guest appearances from quantum mechanics there is in the novel, such as the EPR effect or Schrödinger's cat.

Adaptations

On 5 January 1992 Dirk Gently, Richard MacDuff, Dirk's secretary and the Electric Monk appeared in the Douglas Adams episode of British art documentary series The South Bank Show of the transmitter network Independent Television on. Michael Bywater played Dirk Gently, Paul Shearer both MacDuff and the Electric Monk. The book was adapted as a play by the name of Dirk.

Started in 2007 BBC Radio 4 is a 18 -part radio play series of 30 -minute episodes of all the Dirk Gently books, which included the unfinished version of his recent book itself and aired for three seasons of six episodes from the 3rd October 2007.

In December 2010, BBC Four launched a television series Gently history. After the one-hour pilot episode we announced further episodes.