There are very few bestseller authors who manage to create a completely new imaginary world, separate from their first successful works. Douglas Adams pulled it off. After the science fiction trilogy of five "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the also very popular crime novels with Dirk Gently as the main character span two and a half books. Two and a half because after "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" the third novel "The Salmon of Doubt" was not completed by Adams before he died, though it has been published now as a fragment.
Dirk Gently solves crimes that are utterly impossible, or rather he explains them so eloquently to his clients that no actual result has to be presented. Cats remain missing, cheating husbands undisturbed. Gently does not seem to be the most eager private detective there is. But when a seemingly sane friend gets caught by him, climbing up a multistory building without safety gear, his curiosity does not let him rest. What - or who - possessed his friend? And could he, Gently, possess him as well, just for the fun of it? An absurd spectacle of events unfolds, involving time travel, aliens and ghosts.
The multitude of absurd elements in this story might have been too much if Adams would not have managed to encase it all in his great dry British humor. Dirk Gently accepts all he encounters as just another interesting day in his life - and so does the reader. What lies at the heart of the story remains the simple case of a mad man trying to fix an error he made a long time ago, with horrible consequences. A great joy to see this story unfold and surprise on every page!
