When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shoots up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame, the usual people try to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board; even British Nuclear Fuels rushes out a statement that the situation is completely under control, that it was a one-in-a-million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it hasn't actually anything to do with them at all....

No rational cause can be found for the explo- sion—it is simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal 'IWo of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the to Oslo? Soon he is involved (pleasantly) with an attrac- tive young syornan who has survived the blast, and (unpleasantly) with a couple of angry, bickering gods, as well as a whole series of apparently unrelated challenges to his detective abilities that would have baffled Sherlock Holmes—from the mysterious death of a client whose head is found revolving on a rock LP record to the hostile atten- lion of a stray eagle....

Funnier than Psycho, more chilling than Jeeves Mes shorter than WIT and Pence, the new Dirk Gently novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, is Douglas Adams' most ambitious (and delightfully puzzling) novel to date, pitting Dirk Gently not only against the Laws of the Universe, but also the Norse Gods....
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