Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Front cover from the first UK hardcover edition
Author(s)	Douglas Adams
Country	England
Language	English
Series	Dirk Gently
Genre(s)	Fantasy Science fiction novel
Publisher	UK: William Heinemann Ltd., US: Pocket Books
Publication date	1987
Media type	Print (Paperback and Hardcover), Audiobook (cassette and compact disc)
Pages	306 pp (paperback edition)
ISBN	0-671-69267-4
OCLC Number	320855177
Followed by	The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams, first published in 1987. It is described by "the author" on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic".

The book was followed by a sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. The only recurring major characters are the eponymous Gently, his secretary Janice Pearce and Sergeant Gilks. Adams also began work on another novel, The Salmon of Doubt with the intention of publishing it as the third book in the series, but died before completing it.

A BBC Radio adaptation starring Harry Enfield was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on October 2007. A second series based on the sequel was broadcast on October 2008. A 2010 television adaptation by Howard Overman for BBC Four borrowed some of the characters and some minor plot elements of the novel to create a new story of the same name.

Writing

The genesis of the novel was in two Doctor Who serials written by Adams, City of Death, (in which an alien tries to change history at the cost of erasing humanity from existence), and in particular the cancelled serial Shada, which first introduces a Cambridge professor called Chronotis who is hundreds of years old. He has been living and working at a Cambridge college for centuries, without anyone noticing due to his eccentric time machine. In Shada, Chronotis's longevity is due to him being a Time Lord, and his time machine is an early model TARDIS. These trademark elements from Doctor Who were removed by Adams for Dirk Gently. Shada, which never aired due to a production strike terminating its filming, was later released on VHS with Tom Baker narrating the unfilmed segments, and later completed as a webcast with Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and John Leeson as K9.^[1]

A number of elements in the novel were inspired by Adams' time at university. For example, one plot thread involves a sofa which is irreversibly stuck on the staircase to Richard's apartment; according to his simulations, not only is it impossible to remove it, but there is no way for it to have got into that position in the first place. In a similar incident that occurred while Douglas Adams attended St John's College of Cambridge University, furniture was placed in the rooms overlooking the river in Third Court while the staircases were being refurbished. When the staircases were completed, it was discovered that the sofas could no longer be removed from the rooms, and the sofas remained in those rooms for several decades.

The South Bank Show revealed that Adams based Chronotis' rooms on the rooms he occupied in his third year at university. Likewise, Richard's room – filled with Macintosh computers and synthesisers – was based on Adams' own flat (visited and photographed by Hi-Fi Choice Magazine). The piece of music by Bach that is heard aboard the satellite is "Ach bleib bei uns, Herr Jesu Christ" from the cantata "Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden", BWV 6 (also an organ chorale BWV 649). Adams has stated that this is his personal "absolutely perfect" piece of music, and that he listened to it "over and over; drove my wife completely insane" while writing Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.^[2]

Plot summary

Dirk Gently's plot is non-linear, partly because time travel is one of the main elements of the story.

Four billion years in Earth's past, a group of Salaxalans attempts to populate the earth; however, a mistake caused by their engineer – who used an Electric Monk to irrationally believe the proposed fix would work – causes their landing craft to explode, killing the Salaxalans and generating the spark of energy needed to start the process of life on Earth. The ghost of the Salaxalan engineer roams the earth waiting to undo his mistake, watching human life develop and waiting to find a soul that it can possess. The ghost finds it can only possess individuals that fundamentally want to do the same task it is trying to accomplish itself. Otherwise, it is only able to influence the individual in subtle ways.

In the early 19th century, the ghost discovers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and influences the writer to add a second section to "Kubla Khan" and altering parts of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to describe how to correct the problem that destroyed the landing craft in the distant past. The ghost then begins seeking out someone whose hardship can be influenced by Coleridge's work. It later discovers that Professor Urban "Reg" Chronotis at St Cedd's possesses a time machine disguised as his quarters. In the late 20th Century, during the annual St Cedd's dinner reading of "Kubla Khan", the ghost influences Reg to use the time machine to perform a bit of trickery for a young child at the dinner, while the ghost lures another Electric Monk into Reg's quarters. Upon return to the present, the ghost finds the Monk unusable for its purposes. The Monk then goes off to kill Wayforward Technologies II's CEO, Gordon Way, due to a misunderstanding.

The ghost later tries to influence Richard MacDuff, a former student of Reg and current employee of Gordon Way, who was also at the Coleridge reading. Richard finds himself breaking into the apartment of Susan Way—his girlfriend and Gordon's sister— to erase an answering machine message. His actions lead the police to consider Richard a suspect in the murder of Gordon. Richard discusses this with his former college friend Dirk Gently, who claims to be a "Holistic Detective" believing in the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things". Currently on the case of a missing cat, Dirk examines Richard and finds him to have been in a hypnotic-like state, and determines that Richard was temporarily possessed. Richard recounts the events from the Coleridge reading, include Reg's trick; Dirk, after consulting with a child, concludes that the only way the trick was possible was with a time machine. The two approach Reg, who admits to this fact.

Meanwhile, the ghost has found Michael Wenton-Weakes, a recently-fired editor of an arts magazine. Through subtle influences the ghost makes Michael read Coleridge's works and convinces him to kill Albert Ross, the editor who replaced him. Both now have sought to erase those that supplant them, and the ghost is able to fully possess Michael's body. The ghost, in Michael's body, arrives at Reg's quarters while Dirk and Richard are there, and demands Reg use his time machine to return back 4 billion years in the past. They travel back, and ghost-possessed Michael, using a make-shift environmental suit, sets up to repair the damage to the Salaxalan craft. While they watch, Richard receives a call from Susan from the 20th century on Reg's phone, a quirk of the time machine due to the phone company. Richard learns of Ross's murder, and Dirk quickly surmises the ghost's plan, which if successful will erase the formation of life on Earth. Realising Michael was influenced by Coleridge's works, Dirk instructs Reg to take them to the 19th century, allowing Dirk to interrupt Coleridge long enough to disrupt the ghost's possession and prevent the second part of "Kubla Khan" from ever having been written.

Upon arrival back in the 20th Century, Dirk, Richard, and Reg find humanity as they expect it but with very small, subtle changes. Reg also discovers his time machine no longer functions, after having the telephone company repair the phone line to his quarters. Dirk learns that the missing cat was never missing in the first place as a result of their actions, and charges the client a small amount for the finding of the lost cat, adding "saving the entire human race from extinction – no charge".

Characters in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

• Dirk Gently (also known by a number of other names, including Svlad Cjelli), the operator of the eponymous detective agency that operates based on the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things." He specialises in missing cats and messy divorces. At university, Dirk, seemingly deliberately, created rumours about having clairvoyant abilities by vigorously denying that he had any. He concocted a "get-rich scheme" offering a university exam preparation service and was eventually sent to prison when, by sheer coincidence, he accurately duplicated the exam papers for that year without having seen them.
• Richard MacDuff, a young software engineer working for WayForward Technologies II, owned by Gordon Way. His Anthem software, which is designed as a spreadsheet, but also has a unique feature to convert corporate accounts into music, was extremely popular, but he is falling behind in his deadlines to create an updated version. Throughout the book, he tries to figure out how a couch became impossibly stuck in the L-shaped stairway to his flat, forcing him and any visitors to climb over it to get to his flat.
• Reg (Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology), Richard's old college tutor, a fellow of St. Cedd's College, Cambridge with no apparent duties, who is "on the older side of completely indeterminate". He has a predisposition for childish conjuring tricks and an extremely bad memory.
• Gordon Way, the owner of WayForward, who is pressuring Richard to complete his behind-schedule software project, and ends up getting shot for no immediately obvious reason a few chapters into the book.
• Susan Way, sister of Gordon Way and professional cellist, and the "specific girl that Richard is not married to".

• An Electric Monk from a planet very far from the Earth. Electric monks are coincidentally humanoid robots designed to practice religion in their owners' stead. This particular monk had accidentally been connected to a video recorder and, in attempting to believe everything on the TV, had malfunctioned and begun to believe "all kinds of things, more or less at random", including things like tables being hermaphrodites and God wanting a lot of money sent to a certain address. Since it was cheaper to replace the Monk than to repair it, the Monk was cast out in the wilderness to believe whatever it liked. The Monk also owns a somewhat cynical horse, which he was allowed to keep because "horses were so cheap to make". Upon his arrival on Earth, the Monk has several humorous misadventures.
• Michael Wenton-Weakes, the spoiled son of wealthy parents, known pejoratively as "Michael Wednesday-Week," which is when he promises to have things done by, such as the next issue of his poorly-managed magazine Fathom. His mother sold Fathom to Gordon Way after his father's accidental death when the latter was changing an electric plug. While Michael seems largely apathetic and yielding to others, the loss of Fathom bothers him much more deeply than anyone realises.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writer, one of the founders of the English Romantic Movement. Also a famous laudanum user. In the novel, he is an alumnus of St. Cedd's College. His poems Kubla Khan and Rime of the Ancient Mariner figure prominently in the plot.

Major themes

The central motif of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Many details may appear superfluous, but turn out to be integral to the plot (such as a sofa that Richard ordered which has somehow become trapped on his staircase in a position where it not only cannot be removed, but could not apparently have arrived in the first place; this is explained by the time machine having appeared in the staircase wall while the removal men were bringing it in, Dirk opening the door to help them get it up the stairs before the machine departed). Chaos theory, in its accessible form popularised by writers such as James Gleick, is therefore an appropriate context for this novel.

The novel's title mentions the idea of holism. There are quantum mechanics references as well; phenomena of non-locality, as in the EPR paradox, make appearances, and the concept of Schrödinger's Cat plays a part in helping Dirk determine Richard's mental state, Richard producing clear and rational arguments for why the experiment proposed in the theory cannot be carried out in reality.

Literary significance and reception

In 1990, the Magill Book Reviews said "The author's whimsical sense of humor and his sense that the universe has many unexplored possibilities will arouse the interest of a wide readership."^[3]

This novel caused Adams to become acquainted with the well-known scientist Richard Dawkins. As Dawkins explains, "As soon as I finished it, I turned back to page one and read it straight through again – the only time I have ever done that, and I wrote to tell him so. He replied that he was a fan of my books, and he invited me to his house in London."^[4] Adams would later introduce Dawkins to the woman who was to become his third wife, the actress Lalla Ward, best known for playing the character Romana in Doctor Who. One of her early serials on the programme was City of Death, which Adams wrote, and which shares certain plot elements with the novel.

Adaptations

On 5 January 1992, Dirk Gently, Richard MacDuff, Dirk's secretary, and the Electric Monk all appeared in the Douglas Adams episode of the British arts documentary series The South Bank Show.^[5] Michael Bywater played Dirk, while Paul Shearer played both Richard and the Monk. Several characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were also featured, played by the original television series actors.

The book has been adapted for stage performance as Dirk and in 2005, some fans of Douglas Adams produced an amateur radio series based on the first book. Their efforts began and were coordinated on the Douglas Adams Continuum website.^[6] Three episodes were completed.^[7] Apart from the radio broadcasts, Douglas Adams recorded both unabridged and abridged readings of the first novel for the audiobook market.

A publishing company has been seeking the rights to produce a graphic novel adaptation, though art has been removed for legal reasons.^[8]

BBC Radio adaptation

Announced on 26 January 2007, BBC Radio 4 commissioned Above the Title Productions to make eighteen 30-minute adaptations of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books (including The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and the unfinished The Salmon of Doubt), running in three series of six episodes.^[9]

The first series began on 3 October 2007 and features Harry Enfield as Dirk, Billy Boyd as Richard, Olivia Colman as Janice, Jim Carter as Gilks, Andrew Sachs as Reg, Felicity Montagu as Susan, Robert Duncan as Gordon, Toby Longworth as the Monk, Michael Fenton Stevens as Michael, Andrew Secombe, Jon Glover, Jeffrey Holland, Wayne Forester and Tamsin Heatley.^[10][11][12]

The script for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was by Dirk Maggs, who also directs, and John Langdon. The show was produced by Maggs and Jo Wheeler. As with the previous Hitchhiker's series, the cd version features greatly expanded episodes.^[13] There are a number of structural and detail differences between the radio adaptation and the book, mostly to aid the comprehension of the story when split into six half-hour episodes; this adaptation is a considered step away from the original "Shada" story structure.

Dirk Maggs parted company with Above the Title Productions when he started his own production company, Perfectly Normal Productions and so the project was never completed and the proposed radio series of The Salmon of Doubt remains unmade as of April 2010.

Television adaptation

Main article: Dirk Gently (TV series)

A television version featuring the character was announced during Hitchcon, the first Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy convention by Ed Victor, a literary agent who represents Adams' estate, announced that a television adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was in production. Stephen Mangan played Gently, with Darren Boyd as Macduff and Helen Baxendale as Susan. It was broadcast on BBC Four on 16 December 2010.^[14] The hour-long pilot was well-received, leading to 3 further episodes to be commissioned.^[15]

References

1. ^ The Official Doctor Who Website
2. ^ Interview with M. Throsby, ABC Classic FM, 1999, 17 May 2001 (repeat)
3. ^ "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". Magill Book Reviews. 1990-05-01. ISSN 08907722. 
4. ^ Dawkins, Richard (2001-05-14). "Lament for Douglas Adams". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,490295,00.html. Retrieved 2007-06-29. 
5. ^ Cast list for The South Bank Show episode on IMDb.
6. ^ Dirk Gently radio series discussion forum on douglasadams.se
7. ^ Dirk Gently radio series download site
8. ^ Ray Friesen. "www.dirk-gently.com". Archived from the original on 2004-04-10. http://web.archive.org/web/20040410080252/http://www.dirk-gently.com/. 
9. ^ Radio 4 subpage
10. ^ "BBC – Press Office – Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency opens for business". http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/07_july/13/dirk.shtml. Retrieved 2007-08-14. 
11. ^ Dirk Maggs News and New Projects page
12. ^ July 2007 BBC announcement of radio version
13. ^ Above the Title website
14. ^ "BBC News – Stephen Mangan to star as detective Dirk Gently". 6 October 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11482882. Retrieved 2010-10-10. 
15. ^ Jason Deans, "Dirk Gently to return to BBC4", The Guardian, 31 March 2011

External links

Novels portal

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, reviewed by Ted Gioia (Postmodern Mystery)