Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Submitted By NikkiRae97
Words: 1212
Pages: 5

1. Adams, Douglas. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
Published by Simon and Schuster
A division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
Simon and Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020.
Published 1987.
2. Copyright 1987 by Douglas Adams. Modern. Genre: Fantasy, Comedy, Science Fiction, Speculative fiction. This story was written during the late 80’s and portrays a lot of detective work. During the 80’s being a detective was the cool thing. Douglas introduces a comedy into this making it long lasting to read. It also portrays trends, hairstyles and just modern fashion of people as well as the detective.
3. A million year old ghost alien is trying to manipulate our characters in the book to help him bring him and his friends back to life. With the only time machine on the planet gently tries to help but then figures out the ghost alien is trying to build his utopia on earth and the explosion that killed him and his friends created earth itself.
4. The protagonist of this story is Dirk Gently himself the wacky detective.
Dirk Gently runs a holistic agency. Dirk himself seems to have physic abilities. His prices are also crazy and he’ll charge you for a trip on the Bahamas if it’s necessary to the “detective” work.
5. The antagonist would have to be Samuel Taylor Coleridge who is an old English poet. He is manipulated into writing a poem for the ghost. This poem is about how the ghost crashes on earth, how to save his life and the life of his friends without the world even coming into existence as well and if someone with enough hardship reads this it warps his life and friends life back into existence and the earth as we know it gone.
6. The first complication is the writing of that poem. The second complication is when the ghost tries to manipulate Richard and makes him delete a message on Susan’s answering machine which gets the police involved and detective Dirk comes to help out a pal (Richard) who Dirk finds was minorly possessed. The possession of Michael Wenton Weakes. This is probably the rising action of the story as well when Michael was fired an the ghost possessing him manipulates Michael to do many things one involving the murder of the man who replaced his job Albert Ross. After this event the ghost was able to have full control of Michael and was now on his mission of saving his life and the life of his friends.
7. The story’s narration is well put. From the book title you can believe that all things are tied together in this book and it’s exactly what the book does. All of it just ties it all together from the voice message to the murder to dirk just staring the investigation of by looking for a cat. It affects the mood in a comedy way making things funny at times and really keeping this book appealing to me which most books can’t do. The tone adds a lot of humor just really how the sentences and word choice are brought out and put into use.
8. The climax is when Dirk receives the call of Ross’s death while in the past due to the wacky phone company he received a call from the future. This was all happening while the possessed Michael was repairing the ghost alien’s ship. Dirk convinces Reg to take them to the 19th Century to stop Coleridge from even creating that poem to help the ghost alien.
9. The resolution when it’s all set and done is a bill that Dirk Gently sends his customer and at the end of it, it states Saving human race from total extinction: priceless.
10. Setting takes places at a college in London. We follow a man named Richard avoiding his boss and going to a reading at college when he leaves he finds himself doing things out of the ordinary which through the knowledge given to us through the book you can tell he is being possessed. We also enter a parallel universe where poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is manipulated into helping the alien ghost create something to bring him and his friends back to life. The organization brings us up to date on ALL