The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Its place in Dirk Gently

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is book 2 in the Dirk Gently series. It follows Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It is followed by The Salmon of Doubt. See the full Dirk Gently reading order.

Dirk Gently is a self-proclaimed 'holistic' private detective who believes in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, which in practice means he investigates cases by following whatever coincidence catches his attention rather than conventional deduction -- a structure that let Douglas Adams fold time travel, ghosts, a reconstructed sofa stuck on a staircase, and (in the first novel) an alien warrior race's mistaken visit to prehistoric Earth into ostensibly straightforward English mystery plots. Dirk…