Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier

Twin Peaks obsessives will appreciate the relative closure provided for some characters and plot lines here. The book might frustrate those same obsessives, though, for its lack of complete coherence when set alongside season three: it's clear that Frost and Lynch were operating with the same plot points in mind, but the interplay between season three and this dossier could've been richer, and there are some basic elements that don't jive too well -- Agent Preston coming to realizations about cases thanks to her research that she would've already learned about during Gordon's speeches as portrayed in season three, for instance. (There are also some odd anachronisms, such as Albert making a "trigger warning" joke in a report that he supposedly wrote in the late 1980s.) All that aside, this and Secret History are enjoyable as long as you don't necessarily spend too much time tracking them alongside season three.

Secret History was a smart, layered tale that expanded the mythos of Twin Peaks while keeping the mystery alive.

The Final Dossier feels like it's sole purpose is to console those fans who were disappointed by the lack of closure provided by the show (both in relation to resolving threads from Season Two and The Return).

Frost remains a talented writer, but whereas Secret History felt like he had a story to tell, The Final Dossier feels more like an obligation.

Already reviewed this once and was deleted. There is little to no reason for this book. I love Lynch and Frost Twin Peaks more than most. But this adds nothing to any questions the viewers might have or anything extra we deserve. This is just a fulfilled obligation by Frost the production company and publishers made him obviously do a rush a job. Save your money and get Frosts History of Twin Peaks.

After a panic filled afternoon. Driver left this and my other book in my neighbors patio by "mistake" luckily my neighbors found my note and brought it to me. The book itself is beautifully crafted and full of vibrant color. Filled to the brim with info about all the characters from the series. This series was something my late father and I watched and bounded over.

I really loved the experience of Twin Peaks: The Return but admit I was narratively confused at certain points. This book fills in those missing spaces perfectly, giving background of favorite characters and helping add "logic" to Lynch's visual tone poem.

A must read!!! This book bridges the gap between season 2 and season 3. You find out what happened in the 25 year interim and get answers to questions that have long been simmering. Read it in a night!

I really loved the experience of Twin Peaks: The Return but admit I was narratively confused at certain points. This book fills in those missing spaces perfectly, giving background of favorite characters and helping add "logic" to Lynch's visual tone poem.

A must read!!! This book bridges the gap between season 2 and season 3. You find out what happened in the 25 year interim and get answers to questions that have long been simmering. Read it in a night!

Well if the original TWIN PEAKS left many unanswered questioned and unsatisfying resolutions, THE RETURN has managed to top it I think. This little book is nowhere near as interesting as the brilliant SECRET HISTORY, but at least it offers some reasonable hints about wtf was going on with the recent Return.

The film experience is incomparable to what seems to be just the plot summary of each character's fate. I should have been satisfied with the clues given in the Return to infer what happened in the 25 year gap.

Whipped through TWIN PEAKS: THE FINAL DOSSIER, once I could rip it out of my kids’ hands. Brilliant bit of transmedia storytelling and essential reading for Twin Peaks fans. Plus, the book’s design is a flat-out delight. Grab it.

If you read "the secret history of twin peaks" and watched "the return" than there is no reason to buy this book. There are a couple nuggets in here, but nothing worth the price of the book. Basically just a summation of what you already know, or suspect. This book is literally 1/4 the length of The secret history (you can read it in a few hours) and the longest chapter (by far) is about Dr Jacoby/Amp; if that tells you anything.

Am I the only one who is really disappointed? Most of the female characters having been institutionalized? Case files on a character and then it goes totally left field? (Example: Annie Blackburn) NOTHING on The Palmers, or Laura Palmer. Ugh. As a fan since 1989, this is beyond disappointing.

First, I love Twin Peaks. Love the show, the movie, new season, Secret History...yep, all of it....until this.

I guess this is meant to be some sort of closure but it is very high level and comes across cheesy. There is nothing new here, no depth. Again, after Season 3 it feels unnecessary

A huge letdown after the masterpiece that was Secret History. This is basically just a synopsis of the whole TP series from the beginning through the end of the 3rd season in personal interpretation/report form, doesn't really add any new insight or info to the Twin Peaks mythology in an interesting way, but is a nice recap, if you think that's worth a whole book.

I was very disappointed by this one. I loved Showtime's "Return" and I enjoyed "The Secret History" but to me this felt like one last cash grab. First of all, it's not the most important thing, but 160 pages as listed is deceiving. It's probably closer to 100 pages of actual content, with a lot of completely black pages and pictures of each 'confidential' folder cover. But that's honestly not its biggest problem. It's basically just a list of characters with a couple pages about their fates. None of what it adds is particularly interesting, save for maybe a few key details about Annie. There are a couple things already speculated from "The Return." It doesn't answer any real questions (it mentions a little bit about what happened to her between the original series and "The Return," for example, but no final word on Audrey). The stuff about Norma's family doesn't seem to match her character on the show too much, and seemingly just exists to correct a continuity mistake in "The Secret History".

I didn't expect definitive answers to all of my questions from the finale, but I expected it to be far more interesting than this. But hey, there's an amusing reference to the idiot on Pennsylvania Ave. Dedicated fans of the show will pick this up no matter what, so I'm not sure this review even matters... but it did not at all meet my expectations.

Huge disappointment. This book is padded out to 150 pages with blank pages and really there's only about ~30 pages of new/interesting information. The stuff about the fate of Annie and Donna was interesting (though it's both lazy and misogynist that the fate Frost envisions for three major female characters, including Audrey, was "they went crazy"), as well as the new info about Judy and Phillip Jeffries. Aside from that, it's mostly irrelevant, sometimes joke-y information about minor characters like Jerry Horne and Dr. Jacoby. Mark Frost's writing style is awful here. He must not have contributed much to the script of the Return, because his voice for Tammy sounds nothing like her from the show. His voice for Albert is even worse, mistaking a grumpy misanthrope with golden moral principles for someone who makes lame "trigger warning" jokes and sounds like your average Reddit poster. I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan and have a lot of respect for the world Frost created together with Lynch, but this is clearly a cash-grab.

The first thing you can say about Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier is that "it's a damn fine hardcover artbook!" (although, at 150 pages, it's a much slimmer volume, with many of those pages artistic chapter dividers and totally text-less). With a 3/4 obi printed double-sided - an interlacing pyramid matting on the outside and a dark space nebula on the inside of the obi - and a sumptuous hard cover below the obi that carries the FBI logo on the front, PLUS a gorgeous encyclopaedic spine (with a triangled "three beads" motif in the middle - spooky!!)... you just has to say... "WOW!!

The inner leaf has another motif of triangles... more "triples" than "twins" in this book, ironically!

The book starts off with several FBI memoranda, before going into a series of files on persons of interest to the Laura Palmer case in Twin Peaks. There's also an autopsy report that Albert Rosenfeld wrote on... a member of the original series cast who was recently deceased in the days following the final episode of Season 2. Not that it will be a surprise to anyone, but the actual cause of death adds mystery.

The book's written content only amounts to 81 pages, actually, and covers 3-8 page files on Shelly Johnson, Leo Johnson, Hornes & Haywards, Donna Hayward, Ben & Audrey Horne, Jerry Horne, The Double R, Annie Blackburn, Windom Earle, Lawrence Jacoby (for some reason, the longest, at 10 pages), Margaret Coulson, Sherrif Harry Truman, Major Briggs, Phillip Jeffries, Judy, Ray Monroe, and a few thematic files called back in Twin Peaks, Miss Twin Peaks, today, and final thoughts. Of interest in the story is finding out what happened to Donna, Audrey, Leo Johnson and Sheriff Truman, as well as learning that Jerry Horne has a barn-sized vinyl collection, and how he once turned a lake-side cottage into one giant speaker while hanging out with Canadian rocker Neil Young. Also of interest is finding out exactly how Norma & Annie are related (step-sisters, actually), and what went on with their "mother". There's also some continuity into the events of Twin Peaks: The Return, which is nice too!

Lots of great art and photography in this book - a picture of the Great Northern, creepy Pictures from Season 3 (The Return), and a few more.

Narration of this text could have been included at the end of each Twin Peaks episode. Written in the voice of Agent Tammy Preston, each chapter could include something like "Where exactly was Cooper during this scene?" and it would have injected some grounded logic into the show.

That would have been boring!!!

What I love about the TV series this time around is the strong leanings toward the supernatural and things not of this reality. After watching The Return a bunch of times, it was nice to read the Final Dossier to get the - as mentioned - level-headed "another dimension?!" Scully-esque skepticism about the events surrounding the town, Agent Cooper, Major Briggs, Philllip Jeffires. The writer does provide some classified answers about these characters and...Audrey Horne.

Written as a final case analysis after the events of Twin Peaks: The Return this is a must read. It wraps up in a nice little package some of the plot holes of the series and goes into some of the shifts and time jumps going back to Fire Walk With Me and explains a great deal. You will come away fully satisfied with more understanding of the little town we love and fear and it's inhabitants.

"The Final Dossier" has that classic feel of Twin Peaks, but like in the Season 3 - some of the original characters seem somewhat distant, faded or simply gone. Yes, it could have been longer with extended chapters and maybe few more "suprises" - even though many of the old questions/mysteries are answered throughout the pages.

I was impressed by the overall look of this book - it truly looks like a government dossier. And unlike "The Secret History", there are no messy layouts, filled with random glamour shots or pointless screen captures. And there very few (discreet) references to conspiracies or mythologies, the focus is finally more in the story.

Overall, it's a well-deserved closure (?) to the series.

From Albert Rosenfeld's scathing autopsy of Leo Johnson, to the tragic tale of the Hayward family's dissolution, to Tammy Preston's suprisingly sympathetic attitude to Dr Jacoby (Dr Amp)'s change of career, I was laughing, crying, then laughing again. The same kind of intoxicating belly laughter that the season 3 gave me much of. Thank you Mark Frost.
Personally I didn't find a whole lot here in terms of revelations, but then again I watched series 3 repeatedly with pen and notebook in hand, so maybe I got more than I realized just by paying close attention. Still, this short work does much to raise enough questions to send the Twin Peaks tragic back to watching the whole series with a new frame of mind.

This so-called sequel to Secret Dossier was a big disappointment. It was very short with a rushed "story line" that I felt raised more questions than it answered. At least I borrowed the Kindle version from the library and didn't spend money for it.

For any twin peaks fan, this book not only delivers, it overdelivers with fascinating extra content on almost all of your favorite characters.

The basic premise of the book is agent Tammy preston reading case files that she collected for Gordon Cole on Twin Peaks. She goes through character by character (basically in chapters).

The amount of interesting, hole-filling information this gives related to the recent twin peaks revival is almost too much. Anything that you had a question on in regards to a character, it basically answers. Except for (Spoiler alert) Audrey, still a lot of vagueness there, though some nice additional info.

If you watched the revival, you owe it to yourself to read or listen to this. Note, that it is very "character" focused, though it does touch on the supernatural pieces, most of those are still left to interpretation.

The second book in the twin peaks “dossier series” doesn’t hit the same highs as the first one did for me. While still a lovely book, the presentation is much more straightforward than book 1. Keeping with the meta-narrative this book forgoes the articles, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notes of the first book for “files” on characters. These files give a one-to-two page summary of events that surrounded that character during and after the show. The book is quite short too, which was a big disappointment. I really enjoyed the background information within these pages, but overall it doesn’t do much to expand on the source material. Rather, having so much of Twin Peaks condensed into 150ish pages made it feel like a brief epilogue.