Dirk Gently
Created by Douglas Adams

THAT DOUGLAS ADAMS? The guy with the BBC show and the Vogons and the towels and the three-armed Betelgeusians?

Yup, that Douglas Adams.

So now he's writing about trenchcoats, fedoras, smoky jazz, and femmes fatales?

Well, no.

Even in an era of maverick and non-traditional PI's, DIRK GENTLY defies description. He's the proprietor of a "Holistic Detective Agency", and his main tools include logic, illogic, coincidence, leaps of faith, his unshakeable belief in the interconnectedness of things, and what I can only describe as contrarian psychic powers. Thus armed, he finds missing cats, explains mysteriously exploding airline counters, does the occasional bit of legwork on behalf of pagan deities, and, oh yes, with the aid of sidekick Richard Macduff, saves the human race from extinction every now and then. (His greatest contribution to Western civilization, or at least to English lit majors, is that he manages to find an actual explanation of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". I really wish I'd caught up with these books before I finished college.)

The books' plots, such as they are, are fun--but as ever, Adams' true strength lies in his digressive and hilarious riffs on, well, just about everything. If you want actual linear plot movement, this probably isn't the place to look. They're well worth a search, though, if you're after a refreshing change of pace from traditional PI fare.

POSTSCRIPT

Author Douglas Adams died unexpectedly in 2001, and perhaps because of the attendant publicity, all of his work is now back in print. And in 2002 there was a new Adams collection called The Salmon Of Doubt, which featured (among other things) a story fragment that's the beginning of a third (and now-never-to-be-completed) Dirk Gently novel. This story fragment is also called "The Salmon Of Doubt", and it concerns itself with a case in which Dirk becomes certain he's been hired by a client who:

1. never met Dirk,
2. never contacted Dirk, and
3. left no instructions on how to proceed with whatever it is that he (or she) wants Dirk to do.

This makes Dirk's investigation a trifle complicated, but the semi-intrepid Dirk Gently has never been one to let a few odd circumstances get in the way of his holistic detecting...

Sadly, just as the loopy narrative seems to be taking off, it comes to an abrupt halt. Adams fans will want to check it out, of course, but newcomers will probably get more bang for their buck by checking out Adams' other works first. (That's my opinion, anyway....)

POST-POSTSCRIPT

The pilot for a proposed BBC series starring Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently with Darren Boyd playing his sidekick Richard Macduff is expected to air on BBC4 in the spring of 2011.

EVIDENCE

• "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport.'"
  -- opening, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

NOVELS

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) ..Buy this book
• The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) ..Buy this book
• The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (2002) ..Buy this boo

TELEVISION

• DIRK GENTLY
  (aka "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency")
  (2011, BBC4)
  Based on characters created by Douglas Adams
  Teleplay by Damon Thomas
  Starring Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently
  and Darren Boyd as Richard Macduff
  Also starring Helen Baxendale, Jason Watkins, Doreen Mantle

Respectfully submitted by Victoria Esposito-Shea, with additional info supplied by Kevin Burton Smith. Postscript by Rudyard Kennedy.