Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

I picked this up because it's this month's IndieWeb Book Club pick. Wouldn't have found it otherwise, and that's exactly why book clubs matter. If you've got a place on the internet, why don't you join us in reading? Or, even choose a book for a future month?

Review

Douglas Adams is best known for Hitchhiker's Guide, but this is the stranger sibling.

Less galaxy-hopping, more...a sofa stuck impossibly in a staircase. An Electric Monk who believes things so you don't have to. A detective whose method is everything is connected, so following a random cat is as valid an investigative technique as any.

The plot is difficult to ascertain, which is seemingly the point. Time travel, software, murder, and an ancient ghost collide in ways that shouldn't work but do.

He writes like someone who trusts the reader to keep up while he takes the scenic route through every digression that catches his eye.

Odd, perhaps, but reading this feels like the internet before the internet. Dirk's 'fundamental interconnectedness of all things' is how the web was supposed to work...links everywhere, everything touching everything, no straight lines.

Reading it for a web community's book club felt almost too perfect.

If you love Hictchikers, try this! It's the same brain doing something braver and more tangled. A book rewards the second read even more than the first.

Copy + Share: roadlessread.com/reviews/dirkgently