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The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is the second Dirk Gently novel, and where the first book was an intricate puzzle-box of overlapping plots, this one is a more focused riff on one premise. Norse gods are real. They have been stranded in modern Britain for centuries. Most of them are now living in genteel decline, with Odin in a private nursing home and Thor very angry about everything.
The book opens with one of the funniest scenes Adams ever wrote, a check-in at a Heathrow flight desk that ends in the apparent decapitation of the desk attendant by something invisible. The investigation that Dirk falls into is a more conventional shape than the first novel, but the rolling jokes about modern bureaucratic absurdity are at peak Adams.
The ending feels slightly truncated, possibly because Adams was famously a difficult finisher. The rest of the book holds up almost completely. Four stars. Read after Holistic Detective Agency but you do not strictly need to.
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