From the pen of the improbability master Douglas Adams,
this book mixes death, timeless dimensions, and detective
work in the inimitable style of a unique and brilliant
mind.
Attending a university dinner, Richard is
struck that things have not changed since he was a student.
The masters are the same, an incongruous group of eccentric
individuals, one who has never spoken, one who dominates
and one who performs a conjuring trick that could not have
happened. Expect the unexpected and you will not be wrong.
What has a
mechanical monk on a
horse got to do with
anything, especially as matters are frequently analysed
from the horse’s point of view? Why do they end up in the
bathroom of Reg, Richard’s old master of studies, when
there is no way they could get there?
Of course, no
normal way.
Richard is working on his own computer-
based research, which can recognise and record music from
company reports and accounts – a popular software programme
which is minting it for his employers. The trouble is,
Richard’s
girlfriend is more than a little fed up with him
never appearing for
dinner dates, and so goes off to eat
with the dullest dullard who ever who used to run a
magazine. Meanwhile Richard’s employer has fallen foul of
the mechanical knight who believes it is part of its
programming to kill him when he closed the car boot. No
worries, it is all recorded on the boss’s dictating
machine, which he never puts down – except that the boss,
though dead, isn’t quite “not there.” He is not exactly a
ghost, more a sort of entity that can still do the odd
thing of two with moving objects if he tries hard enough.
Fortunately, Dirk Gently, Richard’s mate from
university days, sees him climbing a drainpipe to his
girlfriend’s flat, and wonders what influence Richard is
acting under. Dragging himself away from the holistic
interpretation of the disappearance of his clients’ cats,
Dirk provides a much needed helping hand, for Richard, by
this time, is wanted by the police on suspicion of murder.
There is an explanation – of sorts. In the surreal
world of Douglas Adams it would be a mistake to explain
everything. Only a holistic detective would discover that
Reg has done strange things with time when he popped
through a portal to set up the conjuring trick for the
after-dinner entertainment. All ends
happily with the bore
the girlfriend went to dinner with, going off to another
dimension where he will be much happier, and stop worrying
about the magazine. The mechanical knight and horse have
also gone off as happily as such beings can be, and the
pseudo-ghost of Richard’s
boss has gone to where all good
ghosts go when they are eventually, finally, dead.
Adams’ fans will read and reread until the covers fall off,
and the print on the page becomes indecipherable from
thumbings and turnings. If you have only read the
“Hitchhiker’s Trilogy” so far, this will be like finding
buried treasure.
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