#31 in Humour
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
- 288
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” is best read for its sentences: the comedy lives in Douglas Adams’s phrasing more than in the mystery. The plot, a detective case tangled up with gods, strikes some readers as thin, and the book as a whole as less engaging than the first Dirk Gently novel. It suits those who come for the wit and are happy to let the story wander.
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
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a 1988 humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book by Adams featuring private detective Dirk Gently, the first being Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Adams had intended to follow it with a third such novel, The Salmon of Doubt, but he died before completing it; an unfinished draft is included in a posthumously published collection of the same name.
Reading order · Dirk Gently series
Full order & progress →- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective AgencyStart here
7.97.9 / 10 - The Long Dark Tea-Time of the SoulThis book
7.97.9 / 10 - The Salmon of Doubt
7.77.7 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 501 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 77% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Humour average of 7.8. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 61 | 12% |
| Hardcover | 7.8 | 440 | 88% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul?
It has 288 pages — shorter than 94% 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.
