For a while, I’ve had a quirk that I indulge occasionally. When watching a film or television show, if I saw a character reading a book or a book placed conspicuously in the background, I’d make a note to read it. I remember specifically beginning this trend during the original run of Lost when I saw Ben reading a copy of VALIS by Philip K. Dick. I ended up having a great time with that book and reading through Dick in general, and found myself doing the same thing several other times. I especially like peering past the characters on screen and perusing their bookshelves, seeing if the set was created with them in mind or if they randomly grabbed some books from a vice grip’s bag and called it a day. Recently, I decided to make more of a habit of it. It leads me to books I wouldn’t otherwise have read, and ignites my imagination wondering where the book came from and who brought it to the set. I thought I would document these instances for posterity. Posterity, in this case, is the literal 3 people that will ever see this or know it exists. So without further ado, after that quick explication, I’ll begin the first post.

The return of Twin Peaks on Showtime was a tremendous event for me. After seeing so many television reboots and reunions in the past few years, it was quite amazing to see something so incredibly off-the-wall and unconventional show up on screen. I think many producers and creators fall victim to the expectations of their viewers and don’t want to take any real risks with their established storyworlds. Take a look at Star Wars. Brought back to life several times, it has never strayed very far from the box it originally came in.

I’ll admit, during the first couple of episodes, I grew a bit uncertain about the fact that the show wasn’t just an hour of catching up with the old gang while they mused “Oh wow, 25 years huh, how wild!” I began to grow a little tired of not seeing my favorite characters interacting and massaging my nostalgia gland. Three weeks in, though, and I was spending every day waiting for Sunday nights just to see what would happen next. I can’t remember the last time that a TV show filled me with such actual anticipation for the next episode. While there were moments where Lynch might have gone off the rails into fits of self-indulgence, for the most part I think the decision to give him full creative control was the best thing that could have happened. It was truly unique in a medium where things are fairly uniform.

I could write for a month about the return of Twin Peaks, and that isn’t necessarily what this post is about, so I’ll save my wider thoughts about it for another time and place. When I started through watching the series for a second time after it ended, I found my book senses tingling. This is from the first episode of the new Twin Peaks, titled Part 1. Police officers are entering the apartment of Ruth Davenport, a woman they find murdered in her bed (well, they find her head on top of someone else’s body, but that’s neither here nor there).

Jackpot!

There were several different volumes there to choose from, but I narrowed it down to a couple in the middle that were particularly prominent (and that I could make out from the vantage point and resolution). As luck would have it, I found both at my library!

After some consideration, I went with Personal Injuries by Scott Turow. Mainly because I was also able to find the audiobook version to listen to on my commute to work.

Now, I don’t read legal thrillers. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read a John Grisham novel. The inner struggles of lawyers and judges just don’t do anything for me. When presented with this opportunity, however, I figured that there was no time like the present to try something new.

The story involves a lawyer named Robbie who gets caught for some kind of money laundering situation, and is convinced to turn into an FBI informant to keep himself out of prison. He is very interested in remaining a free man because his wife is sick and deteriorating fast. They position an undercover agent in his office posing as a paralegal named Evon Miller, who, along with Robbie, is the main focus of this book. Various intrigues go on and there is a lot of wiretapping happening here and there, but there isn’t a lot of thrill and no one seems in any real danger throughout. There’s a lot of talking, a lot of stories involving the various characters, and a haphazard narrator that you forget is telling the story a lot of the time.

With that being said, I really enjoyed it! Turow has a real knack for character building which shines through this novel. Even the side characters are interesting once you learn their story, and there are few people in this book that aren’t fleshed out in living color. Every backstory seemed genuine and unforced when they popped up, and this greatly added to the interactions between the different players and how you painted them in your mind. Without these solid characters, the book would have amounted to nothing. Instead, it was a lot of fun. In my own attempts at writing fiction, I find the slow building of characters the hardest part, and Turow seems to do it effortlessly.

I did cringe a little during some of the scenes where Evon, the undercover FBI agent, details how she realized she was a lesbian. They seemed fairly hokey, but I had to remind myself this book is nearly 20 years old. I was still in high school when this was written, and I’m practically an octogenarian now. Given the time period, it was probably handled fairly well, as far as mass market authors writing to their audiences were concerned. This was only two years after Ellen came out to her television audience, after all.

So, was this book placed purposefully in the scene and does it tie in to Twin Peaks as a whole? Absolutely not. I thought about writing a tenuous and long-winded explanation of how the undercover aspect of the book relate to the doppelgangers of Twin Peaks and the meaning of identity (and I could, dammit, that’s what an English degree is for) but I will leave it alone. This was definitely just something that someone found at the used book store and purchased to fill up a bookcase. Still, it was interesting and something that I wouldn’t have read on my own. I also like to the think of the cascades of choices which led from the book’s original purchase, to its showing up on set, to me seeing it and reading it. I don’t think I’ll be picking up any other legal thrillers anytime soon, but I certainly won’t write them off in the future.