Sometimes owls are just owls

This book, published in 2016, is something as strange as Twin Peaks fan fiction written by one of the creators of the show – but then, we are talking about the strangest TV series ever aired!

“The Secret History of Twin Peaks” is supposedly a dossier found at an undisclosed crime scene a few years after the events described in “Twin Peaks”. It turns out to be compiled by Mayor Briggs and reveals that the murder of Laura Palmer is part of a vast super-conspiracy that goes back centuries, maybe millennia. The conspiracy involves the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Native American curses, alien abductions, Roswell, Majestic-12, Bohemian Grove…you get the picture. Much of the material in this book is obviously inspired by real life conspiracy theory and alternative history, more “X-Files” or “Millennium” than “Twin Peaks”.

A few things are missing. Thus, there is nothing about the White Lodge. Instead, the concept is dark and pessimistic – think John Keel or even H P Lovecraft. The universe is dominated by eldritch-like entities humans can't even begin to fathom. For some reason, the Ancient Ones have made the forest around Twin Peaks their abode. That being said, it's not *entirely* clear that the spirits were originally malevolent, since the local Natives (the Nez Perce) seems to have been protected by them. When the White settlers betrayed the Indians, the balance was broken and the spirits or aliens became “evil”…

New facts are revealed about some of the characters in the TV series. At least I think they are new – I don't remember every strange detail Mark Frost and David Lynch put into “Twin Peaks”! Thus, we learn that the seemingly harmless womanizer Doug Milford is a Deep State operative with decades of experience from the farthest reaches of ufology, that the Log Lady was abducted by aliens as a child while walking in the forest, and that Dr Jacoby once wrote a book titled “The Eye of God: Sacred Psychology of the Aboriginal Mind” which was highly praised by Timothy Leary and made Meher Baba speechless. We also get to know the secret behind Jacoby's psychedelic eyeglasses! Fans of the original series may be interested to know that Audrey Horne survived the explosion at the Twin Peaks bank. The book also contains a joke about Donald Trump, but you will have to find it yourself…

To be honest, I wasn't *that* thrilled by Mark Frost's secret history. It's quite dragging, and the connection between the vast conspiracies and the events in the TV show aren't always clear. Often, they seem to be non-existent. I also wonder about the “X-Files” angle. Are the two fandoms overlapping? But yes, if you are obsessed by both series, I suppose this is a “must have”. Personally, I will give it three stars and mysteriously vanish into the forest. The owl of Minerva only flies at dusk, yes?