cornynat 's review for:

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

4.0

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On par with the first Dirk Gently, in my humble opinion; dare I say, maybe even better? The pacing of these books is an acquired taste, I think: you're in the dark for the most of it, wondering how on earth everything that you're reading can be related... but be patient, just enjoy Adams' witty one-liners and absurd characters, and when you get to the last few chapters everything comes crashing together. I love that there are things I didn't realize straight away, from the first and second book, about how everything does fit together: for example,

Spoiler

I forgot the details about the lawyer's and his advertising wife's car from the scene in which Dirk meets them, and so the bit about the possibly blue BMW in the 2nd to last chapter went over my head at first. Also, exactly who's house the fighter jet destroyed, which is obviously what makes the last line of the book so perfect and amusing: "he turned to the front page to see if there was any interesting news."

It was so satisfying knowing what Dirk doesn't at the end, because most of the time you know that he's on to something but you're just cluelessly being pulled along - I didn't get the same level of satisfaction at the end of the first book, which took longer for all the implications/connections to sink in for me.