Remember D.B. Cooper, the airplane hijacker who parachuted with $200,000 in 1971 and has never been found? Well, one of the FBI's most wanted unsolved cases is back, and it's underground in Portland. In my fourth novel, "The Case of D.B. Cooper's Parachute", a Portland police detective discoverrs that the case is more complicated and gritty than ever. There now appear to be TWO Coopers -- one is basically the bandit folk hero of legend, and the other is a killer and blackmailer using D.B. Cooper's name.
Anything that's known about the Cooper case, I've included in the book -- so I have to explain why almost $6000 of the ransom money turned up on a Columbia riverbank in 1980. But if I were to write a completely nonfiction book about the case, it would be a pamphlet. Too little is known about the hijacker. If he's still alive, he's in his 60s, and, based on the vague police sketch, he could be almost anybody. One thousand people have claimed to know who D.B. Cooper is. DNA tests and fingerprints have proven that they were all wrong, except for me.
So join me underground, on a dark and dangerous tour of Portland's Underground. The case involves dragon boat races, the Simpsons, Timberline Lodge, and Voodoo Doughnuts. The plot spirals from Portland to Seattle to the bleak Russian city of Murmansk. I do reveal the identity of D.B. Cooper in this book, so I am asking a favor of my readers: DO NOT, do not tell anyone who he is. Just as Agatha Christie implored her audiences not to reveal whodunnit in The Mousetrap, I ask you to keep the secret of Cooper undercover in the dark basements of Portland's Old Town. See you there.
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