Agent Palmer

D.B. Cooper continues to remain in the public consciousness. As the only unsolved case of commercial air piracy, the public is still enthralled enough with the mystery that any new news related to Cooper’s case or identity is quickly and widely circulated, almost fifty years later.

This says a lot about the case of D.B. Cooper, who hijacked that Boeing 727 back on November 24, 1971 taking with him the $200,000 in ransom he extorted before parachuting out of the plane.

“Len Deighton, the mastercraftsman of spy thrillers, here applies his eye for stunning detail and his story-telling skill to the novel of action. With documentary precision, he has created a powerful panoramic account of a bombing raid over the Ruhr during World War II. And in the process, he has written a devastating indictment of war and of the mechanical processes – in man and society – that perpetuate it.”

That’s the first paragraph on the inside dust cover of Bomber by Len Deighton and it is a perfect description of the book.

Every year for as long as I can remember, I have listened to Arlo Guthrie’s classic “Alice’s Restaurant,” either on the day before or day of Thanksgiving. It’s something that my parents had started at some point and, more to the point, it’s a tradition I have continued since moving out of the house (to my father’s joy), even when I’m not spending Thanksgiving with them.

Now before I get into the song, and there’s a lot to get into, let’s talk about this tradition. As traditions go, it’s hardly odd, and there’s a part of me that wonders why I don’t encounter more people who share this tradition.

There’s something to be said for telling your story in your own words. In 2006, Steve Wozniak reached that point at age 55.

In his own words, he wrote, “I think it’s time to set the record straight. So much of the information out there about me is wrong. I’ve come to hate books about Apple and it’s history so much because of that. For instance, there are stories that I dropped out of college (I didn’t) or that I was thrown out of the University of Colorado (I wasn’t), that Steve and I were high school classmates (we were several years apart in school) and that Steve and I engineered those first computers together (I did them alone).”

An In-depth Report by Agent TBD.

How do you make a feature length film about an event that only lasted for three and a half minutes? The short answer is that you show the event twice and you don’t start the first time until about a third of the way into the film.

The better answer is that you don’t make the movie about those three and a half minutes. You make it a character study of the man who lived through that event.