The Salmon of Doubt is the late Douglas Adams' third comic novel about "holistic detective" Dirk Gently. Ten tantalising chapters of this unfinished project are padded to book size with about 50 short Adams pieces, mostly non-fiction.

Additional material includes introductions by Stephen Fry and editor Peter Guzzardi (who stitched together the Salmon fragment from disk drafts), The Guardian's Adams biography, Richard Dawkins' farewell piece, and the order of the memorial service.

The non-fiction by the man himself ranges from perhaps a dozen meaty articles and speeches to brief squibs, interview/questionnaire answers and tiny asides like:

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognise something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.

There are enjoyable pieces on computers (especially), atheism, dogs, manta rays on the Great Barrier Reef, the Save the Rhino stunt climb, and PG Wodehouse. Much of the rest is ephemeral; you can't help reflecting that Adams himself never chose to collect all this lightweight newspaper work.

Lovers of his fiction will welcome the Hitch-Hiker-related short stories "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" and "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe", despite the latter's dreadfully dated political punch line.

What of The Salmon of Doubt itself, a quarter of this book? There's a glimpse of a far-future estate agent's utopia, a woman asking Dirk Gently to investigate a cat that's literally only half there (his puzzling reluctance to take the case may echo Adams' own feelings about the novel), Gently's capricious trip to America in response to an unknown client's total lack of instructions, the tragic death of a rhino as perceived by the rhino... Many teasing questions; we'll never know the answers.

Overall it's a must-have for devoted Adams fans and completists, a likely disappointment (though with pleasant exceptions) for new readers. --David Langford

2008-07-30 The Benefit of Doubt.

`The Salmon of Doubt' is a posthumously published collection of words put into a fantastic collection of arrays by Douglas Adams whom had previously been assembling words in a very pleasing manner in the various incarnations of `The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' and the `Dirk Gently' novels.

The book contains tributes from comic actor and writer Stephen Fry, Nicholas Wroe, scientist and writer Richard Dawkins and the editor of this collection, Peter Guzzardi. All of which give some insight into Douglas but nothing like the insight Douglas gives of himself in the collection of articles, drafts of speeches and letters which have been prised from the hard drive of Douglas' beloved Apple Mac.

The pieces have been assembled into three sections, Life, The Universe and Everything but the themes don't really add anything to the writing of a man whom could have paraphrased the phone book in a manner that would leave us weeping with laughter.
The best part of the book is the quarter given over to `The Salmon of Doubt' an abandoned rather than incomplete Dirk Gently novel. Adams had apparently decided that the ideas he was exploring did not suit Dirk Gently and was considering rewriting the piece as a Hitch Hikers novel.

Although it would have possibly being a great novel as Adams then saw it I have to say that I enjoyed reading what he had actually written and am only disappointed that I will never get to marvel at the clever conclusion that not only tied up all the loose ends I'd noticed but ten or twelve others I wouldn't have noticed until rereading the book for the nth time. The beauty of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books was that every time you reread them you found something new which you hadn't noticed before.