The Salmon of Doubt

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

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The Benefit of Doubt. - Rated
`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.

A look into an awesome mind - Rated
If you have read every Douglas Adams book but still don't feel close enough to the great man himself, this is the book for you. You can see how the master thinks, how his everyday musings were written with the same wit and wisdom as his greatest works of fiction and read a wonderfull work in progress. As he says of 'Sunset at Blandings' (unfinished due to the author's death) by PG Wodehouse, you can see in DNA's first Chapters of his new Dirk Gently novel, the craftsman at work, the sentences are unpolished, the work has not even been through its first proof-read and it is all the more wonderful because of this. This book is fact, fiction and autobiography all rolled into one. Read it. It will blow your mind.

Be aware of what you're getting - Rated
For those who know Douglas Adams' work, chances are you are aware that The Salmon of Doubt is the last of Adams' work before his untimely death and is incomplete. Thus for those with an interest in Adams' work this is your last insight into what would have been the third book in his Dirk Gently series. Or perhaps the sixth book in the Hitchhikers series? Who knows what this may have ended up as.

This book will give you your last Adams' fix but be aware. Although the book is listed as 336 pages, the actual in-progress novel The Salmon of Doubt is tucked away at the very end of the book and constitutes only a small portion of the entire book. The majority of the content is a compendium of Adams' work ranging from speeches to columns to random notes. It's a chance to see a little more of Douglas Adams for those who are fans, but for those who just bought it for the novel you may feel a bit ripped off.

Don't um, don't ah, just buy and read. - Rated
This lunchtime I finished reading The Salmon Of Doubt, the first work of Douglas's I've read since he died all those years ago. I've not really put off reading it, books often stay in my teetering/tottering piles books for *years* before passing the rubicon of my having read them and getting filed on the bookshelves/book-chest-of-drawers like so many hunting trophies, but I have to say that I didn't relish the prospect of reading a book that I'd never get to see finished. I was wrong: this is possibly my favourite of all his books, not because of the Dirk Gently novel-in-progress, but because it's a treasury of Douglas writing as-himself about things that interest or annoy him. That makes it feel more personal than any other work of fiction, and the Salmon chapters are added on the end of the book like coffee and mints after an excellent meal, rather than presented as a main course where their unfinished state would have disappointed. This book is an ideal tribute to a wonderful man.

A look into the personality of DNA, + a weird story - Rated
I got this book from my step-brother, and although ithe story in it was unfinished and a little confusing, the short stories and intos that Douglas Adams had written through the many years of his writing career were entertaining and made me wish i'd started reading his books before. If you're a DNA fan then you should definitly get this