The long, dark five o'clock tea of the soul
The long dark five o'clock tea of the soul ( English original title: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul ) is a fantastic detective novel by the English writer Douglas Adams that was published in 1988 and, after The Electric Monk, the second part of the Dirk Gently series.
The German translation is by Benjamin Schwarz .
action
Geoffrey Anstey, a wealthy man in the music industry , is the newest client of holistic detective Dirk Gently (aka Svlad Cjelli ). Anstey claims he is being chased by a giant, green-eyed, scythe- wielding monster who will insist on performing a contract and threaten to kill him. Dirk doesn't take the allegations very seriously, but the money is extremely welcome because he's chronically broke and also wants to get a new refrigerator - he hasn't opened the old one for three months.
When Dirk arrives at his client several hours late, the police are already on site - and the client is dead. Due to the find situation (the room was locked from the inside and barricaded) the police assume a particularly imaginative suicide . Plagued by guilt, Dirk decides to pursue the case anyway.
Meanwhile, the American Kate Schechter runs into a strange man at the terminal of London's Heathrow Airport who, like her , wants to travel to Norway , but apparently neither has a plane ticket nor a passport , which is why he and an employee of the airline have an argument. Suddenly the check-in counter blows up: an apparently spontaneous explosion for which there is no explanation other than an Act of God ( force majeure ).
Looking for explanations, Kate and Dirk are drawn into a family quarrel - between the quick-tempered thunder god Thor and his father Odin , who now calls himself Mr. Odwin , has exchanged his divine power for sheets made of fresh white linen and at the expense of the yuppies Simon and Cynthia Draycott lives in an expensive private English clinic.
Finally, Dirk and Kate, independently of one another, arrive in Valhalla , where the numerous storylines and hints of the plot are resolved.
background
The title itself is a quote from the third novel in the Anhalter series ( Life, the Universe and All the Rest ) and describes the boredom of the immortal Wowbagger. The original English edition was written and typeset using FullWrite Professional software on an Apple Macintosh II and an Apple LaserWriter II NTX .
Adaptations
The BBC produced a radio play entitled The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul , which aired in October 2008. Speakers included Harry Enfield , Peter Davison , John Fortune and Stephen Moore .
In December 2010 , BBC Four aired a one-hour pilot episode of a Dirk Gently television series . In 2012, three more hour-long episodes were broadcast and the series then discontinued.
literature
- Douglas Adams: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Heinemann, London 1988, ISBN 0-434-00921-0 .
- Douglas Adams: The long dark five o'clock tea of the soul. Heyne, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-453-21072-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul ( Memento from December 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) at abovethetitle.com
- ^ BBC - Press Office . Archived from the original on November 12, 2012. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 16, 2008.
- ↑ BBC website
- ^ Ian Wolf: Dirk Gently axed by BBC Four . The British Comedy Guide (website), May 28, 2012
