The original intention of The Salmon of Doubt was a Dirk Gently novel. Adams commented that some of the ideas he developed inSalmon of Doubt were not really working within a Dirk Gently framework. Those ideas would have been salvaged, undergoing necessary changes on the way, and put into a sixth Hitchhiker's book; as he thought that the last book in the series, Mostly Harmless, was a very bleak book and wanted to finish on a slightly more upbeat note.[1]
The plot, set a few weeks after the events in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, involves Dirk Gently refusing to help find the missing half of a cat, receiving large amounts of money from an unknown client, and then flying to the United States. Dirk pays a visit to Kate Schechter (who had first appeared in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) and ...