Book #4: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

Before I say anything about Book #4 for the year, Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks, I'm going to give a warning: I cannot talk about this book without spoiling the book, the past seasons of the show and, possibly, spoiling the upcoming season as well. I'm saying that now so that, if this is important to you, you can go ahead and stop reading now and not have anything spoiled for you.

Spoilers ahead.

Not kidding.

OK, you had your chance. A couple of weeks ago, I read two other Twin Peaks books to get ready for the show coming back to Showtime this year. Not only am I excited enough about that to decide I'm going to get Showtime, but I also picked up "The Secret history of Twin Peaks" to see if it could tell me things I didn't already know. While reading it, I also started re-watching the original series again, and I have to say a few things about it before I say anything else:

1) The first season finale is an amazing piece of television. It doesn't solve the mystery of Laura Palmer's death, but it manages to take the plot threads of over twenty characters and tie them all together. It doesn't pay off all the plots, but it moves every single one forward if it doesn't conclude them, and it still offers cliffhangers leading into season 2.

2) It was slightly disorienting to see Madchen Amick as Betty's mom on Riverdale the other night after I just saw her as Shelly Johnson last weekend. I know I've seen her in other things since "Twin Peaks" ended, but it was just a weird jump to think that Shelly's old enough to be someone's mom now, and I wonder if she's going to be on the new "Twin Peaks" at all when she seems to be a regular on "Riverdale". Maybe she'll do both.

3) I'm up to Maddy's death in my re-watch. Decades later, it's still one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen on television, both because of the supernatural part but also because of the sheer brutality.

The book starts with a slightly interesting concept: it's a collection of documents assembled by a mysterious archivist, detailing the secret history of the town of Twin Peaks, which are being analyzed by an FBI agent who is not Agent Dale Cooper. At the beginning of the book, the archivist's identity is unknown, but it is revealed by the end. In between, the documents start as far back as the Lewis and Clark expedition before moving to the present day. Along the way, historical characters from Richard Nixon to L. Rob Hubbard drift in and out of the pages, but more exciting for fans of the show is that ancestors of the characters we know and love, and eventually some of the characters themselves, also pop up. As a reader, I expected to hear about some of them, like the history of the Log Lady's marriage and widowhood or the growth of the Horne business empire, but there were other, more surprising pieces, like the tale of Pete and Catherine's courtship and marriage, or an exploration of Josie Packard's sordid past.

The book also does a bit to set the stage for the new series by casually filling in the details of where a few of the characters have been since the last time we saw them. In some cases, this is a welcome surprise (the final time we saw Pete Martel, Andrew Packard, and Audrey Horne in the series, they were inside the bank when it exploded, for example, so it's nice to know who survived and who didn't), but in some cases it turns out to be a dark indicator that the character we know and love will not be the same people when we see them again.

This was at times a dense read, and it's definitely not for people who haven't watched the show. If you're a fan, though, this is fantastic, and probably essential reading.

Books 2 and 3: "The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper" and "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer"

I'm talking about books 2 and 3 for this year as a pair, because they kind of are. The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer are both tie-in books for the early 1990s television series Twin Peaks, which is coming back to Showtime this year. As part of the preparation for the return, I decided to reread the secret diary and to read the autobiography for the first time. There are similarities between the two books, but also a number of differences.

Both books attempt to give more background material on main characters from the show. In an ideal world, this would enhance the experience of watching the show, but it really only works for the secret diary. In the show, Laura Palmer is the honor student, Meals on Wheels delivery driver, special education tutor Homecoming queen, and after her murder Agent Cooper discovers that Laura hid a number of very dark secrets. Her secret diary expands on that, detailing her descent into drug dealing and prostitution and the reasons behind it. The book, which actually appears in the show, gives voice to a character who doesn't really have one for the simple reason that the first time Laura shows up in the pilot, she's already dead. While she eventually speaks a little through tape recordings and video tapes, this book is the only time fans get to hear her speak for herself.

The autobiography, on the other hand, adds almost nothing to the show. It's the story of Agent Cooper's life as told through tape recordings he made from the age of nine onward, but it doesn't tell the story of anything that fans and viewers would want to know. Wondering how Cooper became a devotee of mysticism? This book won't really tell you, because Cooper didn't make any tapes during that time. Wondering about his career in the FBI before he went to the town of Twin Peaks to investigate Laura's murder? Sorry, those recordings are classified. On the other hand, if you're wondering what puberty was like for a young Dale Cooper, well, there are pages of it. I can't imagine that any fans of the show who bought this were all that glad that they did so.

So, I read two books. One of them expands and illuminates the fictional world it is based in, while the other is a shameless grab for fan cash. That probably explains why the secret diary has been put back in print, while the autobiography, which I paid a dollar for at a library book sale, is now selling for fifty bucks on Amazon.

I'm assuming people who are willing to pay that are people who haven't read it.