#30 in Humour
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
- 283
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
Douglas Adams treats the detective novel as a box to cram everything into: a ghost, time travel, a murder and a great many jokes. What some readers come back to, years later, is the phrasing, the kind of sentence that turns a corner halfway through. It is less an orderly whodunnit than a showcase for wit, and this first Dirk Gently book suits readers who enjoy that for its own sake.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, 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".
Reading order · Dirk Gently series
Full order & progress →- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective AgencyThis book
7.97.9 / 10 - The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
7.97.9 / 10 - The Salmon of Doubt
7.77.7 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.9 across 752 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 84% of the weight and the score stays at 7.9 — the Humour average of 7.8 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 38 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 7.9 | 714 | 95% |
Frequently asked
How long is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?
It has 283 pages — shorter than 95% of the ranked books in Humour.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Humour — with scores between 7.5 and 8.0, closest to this book.
