The Autobiography of Special F.B.I. Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes
by Scott Frost
What if Agent Cooper had been recording his thoughts since his thirteenth birthday? It’s a clever idea for a tie-in product, and writer Scott Frost (brother to Mark, who co-created the show) treats the assignment with more thoughtfulness than is usually applied to these types of things. This comes as a surprise, considering the two episodes written by S. Frost are among the show’s very worst.
The tone of the book is divided between light and serious, sometimes dipping into darkness. Frost captures Cooper’s voice fairly well, and sketches a background that would believably lead him to become the character we meet on the show. The result is entertaining, often funny, and at times touching.
It’s fun to see figures from the show (Windom Earle, Gordon Cole) make appearances. There are also callbacks to some very small moments on the show, which proves Frost did his homework. In the first season, for instance, Cooper mentions that he doesn’t like birds, and here we discover the reason.
The book becomes a bit clumsy when it comes time to knit Frost’s inventions with elements of the show. There is an excess of portent, and some passages that are just outright wrong (Cooper dreaming about dancing with “a tiny little man and a very beautiful young woman” weeks before going to Twin Peaks).
GRADE: B+