The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
1988
- norse mythology
- horoscopes
- fiction, fantasy, contemporary
- fiction, humorous
- fiction, science fiction, general
- gently, dirk (fictitious character), fiction
- private investigators, fiction
- dirk gently (fictitious character)
- private investigators
- fiction
The story
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](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2163714W). It was followed by the [Salmon of Doubt](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2163715W), an incomplete Dirk Gently novel included in a posthumous collection of the same name. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul has been adapted for radio, and several plot lines appear in the 2010 BBC TV series.
What it’s like
Brisk, deadpan prose that jumps between tangled storylines with the comic timing of a seasoned stage farceur, the sentences bright and dry as a British winter afternoon. The world is ordinary English suburbia and country houses rendered with absurd precision: a cat's inexplicable behaviour, a teapot-sized mystery, a rural village full of quiet oddities, and Norse gods wandering into the present day with bureaucratic grumbling. Nothing is gloomy despite the title; the "darkness" is a running joke about tea-time melancholy, not a true bleakness. Pacing is quick and looping, with chapters that circle back and snap shut like puzzle boxes, and the emotional register stays light, affectionate and faintly bewildered. Violence occurs in cartoonish bursts and deaths are brief and mostly offstage; there is no sexual content and nothing frightening beyond mild peril. It suits a rainy Sunday with a pot of tea, a plane journey where you want to laugh out loud, or a comfort reread. It is for readers who enjoy clever, digressive comedy, odd characters who take themselves seriously, and a story that refuses to behave.
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