Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency

by Douglas Adams

Richard MacDuff attends the Coleridge dinner at his old college St Cedd's, where he witnesses his former tutor, Professor Urban "Reg" Chronotis, perform an inexplicable magic trick in which he makes a salt cellar disappear, then reveals it by smashing a centuries-old clay pot that a young girl brought to the dinner. The dinner concludes with a reading of Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan", including a mysterious (and fictional) second part.

Meanwhile, an Electric Monk and his horse find a mysterious door on an alien planet, which leads them to Earth. MacDuff and Prof. Chronotis find the horse in the Professor's bathroom, but this does not seem to overly surprise him. The Monk, misunderstanding a casual comment, shoots and kills MacDuff's boss Gordon Way. Way's ghost makes several attempts to contact the living.

MacDuff returns to his London flat and engages in odd behaviour, including climbing a drainpipe to break into the flat belonging to his girlfriend, Susan Way, to erase an embarrassing message left on her answering machine. Susan returns from a night out with Michael Wenton-Weakes. Wenton-Weakes subsequently begins behaving strangely, becoming obsessed with Coleridge and intense feelings of aggrievement.

The next day, MacDuff visits former schoolmate Dirk Gently, a self-claimed "Holistic Detective" who believes in the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things" and is currently searching for a missing cat. Gently informs MacDuff that he is a suspect in the death of Gordon Way, and begins to unravel the mysterious chain of events. Gently concludes that MacDuff had been possessed by a ghost and that a time machine was involved. Ultimately, the two travel to St. Cedd's to meet with Prof. Chronotis, and a complex history is revealed.

Four billion years in Earth's past, a group of aliens called Salaxalans landed on Earth; however, a mistake caused by their engineer – who used an Electric Monk to irrationally believe the proposed fix would work – caused their landing craft to explode, killing the Salaxalans. The ghost of the Salaxalan engineer roamed the earth, watching human life develop, searching for a way to undo its mistake, and waiting to find a sympathetic soul that it could possess. In the early 19th century, the ghost possessed Coleridge, and influenced his writing of "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", but found the poet too 'relaxed' on laudanum to be useful. It discovered that Prof. Chronotis possesses a time machine disguised as his rooms at the college. At the aforementioned Coleridge dinner, the ghost influenced Prof. Chronotis to use the time machine to perform the magic trick, using the opportunity to lure the Electric Monk and its horse to Earth. However, the ghost found the Monk unusable for its purposes. The ghost subsequently attempted to possess MacDuff, resulting in his odd behaviour, before finding its sympathetic host in Wenton-Weakes.

The ghost, still in possession of Wenton-Weakes, arrives at Prof. Chronotis' quarters and convinces them to take him back in time to just prior to the explosion of the Salaxalan ship, so that he can make the proper repairs. As they watch the ghost take Wenton-Weakes' body out towards the ship, MacDuff gets a call from Susan and learns that Wenton-Weakes recently killed a professional rival (Susan having been conveyed the information by the ghost of Gordon Way). Gently realises that the similarity between Wenton-Weakes' jealousy toward his rival and the ghost's jealousy of humanity was what allowed the ghost to possess him. Gently concludes that the Salaxalans intended to settle permanently on Earth, and the explosion of their ship was what caused the beginning of life on the planet. In order to foil the ghost's plans, Gently, MacDuff, and Prof. Chronotis travel to the 19th century. Gently interrupts Coleridge, becoming the "man from Porlock" and preventing the full version of "Kubla Khan" from being written.

Upon arrival back in the 20th century, Gently, MacDuff, and Prof. Chronotis find small changes as a result of their actions, including the existence of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, which had not existed in their original timeline. Gently learns that the missing cat he was searching for never went missing, and sends his client a revised bill that reads, "To: saving human race from total extinction – no charge."