{"product_id":"skyjackisbn-9780307451309","title":"Skyjack","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER • The true, unsolved story of D. B. Cooper’s 1971 airplane hijacking, one of the greatest cold cases of the twentieth century, by an author featured in \u003ci\u003eD.B. Cooper: Where Are You?!,\u003c\/i\u003e now streaming on Netflix\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Here is writing and storytelling that is vivid and fresh—a delectable adventure.”—Gay Talese\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.”\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThat was the note handed to flight attendant Florence Schaffner by a mild-mannered passenger now known as D. B. Cooper on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was also the start of one of the most astonishing aviation whodunits in the history of American true crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline before parachuting into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, never to be seen again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe case of D. B. Cooper is a modern legend that has obsessed and cursed his pursuers for generations with everything from bankruptcy to suicidal despair. Now, with \u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e, Geoffrey Gray obtains a first-ever look at the FBI’s confidential Cooper file, uncovering new leads in the infamous case. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eStarting with a crack tip from a private investigator, Gray plunges into the murky depths of the decades-old mystery to chase down new clues and explore secrets of the case’s most prominent suspects, including Ralph Himmelsbach, the most dogged of FBI agents, who watched with horror as a criminal became a counter-culture folk hero; Karl Fleming, a respected reporter whose career was destroyed by a D. B. Cooper scoop that was a scam; and Barbara Dayton, a transgender pilot who insisted she was Cooper herself. With explosive new information, \u003ci\u003eSkyjack \u003c\/i\u003ereopens one of the great cold cases of the twentieth century.The Jump\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Hunt\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Curse\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfterword\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003cp\u003e“Gray dives into the world of online sleuths, speculators, and zealots as if he were Hunter S. Thompson hitting the road with the Hell’s Angels. . . . One thing \u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e makes entertainingly clear is that it’s a weird, weird world.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e will take you on an engaging discovery.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Gray organizes this, his first book, like a Tarantino film, cutting chronology into strips, then reassembling them in a sequence that readers may consider (pick one) eccentric, confusing, artistic, random, maddening, fun, revelatory. It’s all of the above.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eCleveland Plain Dealer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fascinating. . . . [A] rollicking reading experience.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eOregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Out of the wild blue yonder comes this pleasing tale of obsession and mystery. Geoffrey Gray has essentially parachuted into the early 1970s and found a nearly forgotten episode that elucidates a swath of our cultural history. The result is a clean, smart whodunit full of quirky characters, imaginative sleuthing, and thrilling surprises.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eHampton Sides, author of \u003ci\u003eHellhound on His Trail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“With verve and assurance worthy of his protagonist, Geoffrey Gray pulls readers along on a kaleidoscopic chase through the cult of Cooper. Both a masterful re-creation of the paranoid 1970s, and an exhilarating firsthand account of an erosive obsession, \u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e takes us down the rabbit hole with Gray—and what a journey it is.”\u003cb\u003e—James  Swanson, author of\u003ci\u003e Manhunt and Bloody Crimes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Who was D.B. Cooper? In \u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e, Geoffrey Gray lures in the reader with this iconic unsolved mystery, and for the next 290 pages explores a story as attention-grabbing as a bag of hot money. D.B. Cooper emerges as the great McGuffin of 1970s America, a prism through which Gray exploits to the fullest with his propulsive writing style, mad commitment to detail, and explores everything from the early years of gender reassignment surgery to the birth of airline security culture to the ghostly legends of the Pacific Northwest's Dark Divide.”\u003cb\u003e—Evan Wright,\u003ci\u003e New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eGeneration Kill\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e tells the legendary story of D.B. Cooper in a way that’s as inventive and as engaging as the subject itself. Only a writer as talented as Geoffrey Gray could knit together the many strands of this mystery and the extraordinary characters who have dedicated, and in some cases destroyed, their lives in pursuit of the truth. Just as Gray finds himself sucked into the tale, readers will leap into the void alongside him, landing on their feet and smiling at the shared adventure.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eMitchell Zuckoff, author of \u003ci\u003eLost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure,\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Easily one of the most delightful books I’ve read in a long, long time. In his obsessive search for answers in the legendary case, Gray becomes a little unhinged himself as well as encountering an array of characters I haven’t seen the likes of since Mark Twain sent Huck down the Mississippi. His style fits the case, and Gray can be compared with Tom Wolfe and Evelyn Waugh in his talent for unearthing the eccentrics of the world and the bizarreness of life.”\u003cb\u003e—John Bowers, Associate Professor of Writing, Columbia University, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Colony and Love in Tennessee\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeoffrey Gray\u003c\/b\u003e writes about crime, politics, sports, travel and food. He is a contributing editor at \u003ci\u003eNew York\u003c\/i\u003e Magazine, covered boxing for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003eand for programs like\u003ci\u003e This American Life\u003c\/i\u003e, writes for other newspapers and magazines, and once drove an ice-cream truck. \u003ci\u003eSkyjack\u003c\/i\u003e is his first book.\u003cb\u003eJuly 6, 2007\u003cbr\u003eNew York, New York\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSkipp Porteous wants to talk and says can we meet and I say fine. He arrives in a suit that is South Beach white, and between the wide lapels is a T-shirt that is snug and black. He has leather sandals on his feet, no socks. His hair is curly and brown. His goatee is trimmed and gray in spots. He removes his sunglasses, which reveal hooded eyes, and gives the room a looky-loo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe bistro is typical midtown Manhattan. A fruit basket of martinis on the menu—mango, peach, Lillet. The clatter of voices at the banquettes and the clank of dishes ricochet over the roar of lunch talk. In the gilded mirrors on the walls are reflections of Windsor knots, hair gel, six-figure cleavage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have dealt with Porteous before. He had a few story ideas; none worked. I can’t remember why now. Porteous was his own story, and maybe I should have written about him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe used to be a preacher before he became a private investigator. In the late 1960s, Porteous ran a church in Los Angeles and worked the Sunset Strip with his Bible. He preached to hippies, the homeless, anybody who would listen to his salvation pitch. “Excuse me,” he would say, “if you died tonight, where would you spend eternity?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe game for Porteous then was to win souls for the Church, until he lost his own. He saw corruption in the Church and started digging around. What he found was that he was good at digging around, often in disguise. Porteous liked undercover work so much he made a second career out of it. For a small-town sheriff, he bought drugs as a narc. For the FBI, he infiltrated gangs and groups wearing a wire. It was a decent living. The feds paid on time, and in cash.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis style is not tough-talking or pushy. Porteous has a holistic approach toward PI work. Some retired cops flash badges or guns. Porteous starts each investigative day with a meditation session.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe also hires mostly women to do PI work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Women have better instincts than men,” he told me when we first met.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSherlock Investigations, his agency, had the gimmicky type of title that attracts a lot of attention on the Web. It snared me, and countless others needing help solving problems of an unusual kind. Like the disappearance of Captain Jack, an iguana that was stolen through an open window in Greenwich Village. Or the woman who called because she was convinced the actress Lily Tomlin was stalking her (she wasn’t). Or the man convinced his wife was having an affair with his father (she was). Or the runaway from Israel they found living under a bridge in Arizona. Or the mother from India who wanted to spy on the man her daughter was dating, and all the suspicious spouses and suits who are convinced (and wrongly so) that their phone receivers are tapped and their offices are bugged. Sin and paranoia form the backbone of his business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s loud in the bistro and I can’t hear the private investigator so good. I lean over my moules, anxious to hear what case has come over Porteous’s transom. Another missing pet? Another teenage runaway? Gypsy scams?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNope. It’s a new client, Lyle Christiansen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis intel is sparse. From what the private detective has pieced together, Lyle Christiansen appears to be a kooky old man, an eccentric, and prodigious. He is eighty years old, and lives in Morris, Minnesota, a prairie town closer to Fargo, North Dakota, than it is to Minneapolis. Lyle grew up in Morris and worked for the post office there. In retirement, he has become an inventor. He is in the process of patenting a hodgepodge of household contraptions: the Yucky Cleaning Wand (it slips into the neck of a bottle to clean the tough-to-reach places), an egg breaker that cracks eggs perfectly every time, and a shirt that disguises the appearance of suspenders (he finds them distasteful—in his version, you wear them on the inside of the shirt).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChristiansen’s wife, Donna, has a creative mind, too. Over the years she has assembled a collection of expressions, adages, sayings, idioms, clichés, and senseless American verbiage. The title of her book is \u003ci\u003eAs Cute as a Bug’s Ear\u003c\/i\u003e. It has 2,270 entries, ranging from “As Bald as a Billiard Ball” to “You’ve Got it Made.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGreat. But so what? What’s the story here? Why would a retired post office worker and aspiring inventor from Bumblef***, Minnesota, need the services of a Manhattan sleuth-for-hire like Porteous?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePorteous was puzzled too. The first e-mail he received from Christiansen was cryptic. It read: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Dear Good People at Sherlock Investigations, I would very much like to contact Nora Ephron, Movie Director of the movie, “Sleepless in Seattle”. I think she would be interested in what I have to say.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Sherlock employee who handled the note was Sherry Hart. Before she became an investigator, Hart tried to make it as a singer-songwriter and actress. Her training in the dramatic arts now helps with her undercover work. She’s handled hundreds of cases for Porteous, and as she read over Christiansen’s e-mail she thought, \u003ci\u003eHere we go\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eAnother whackjob\u003c\/i\u003e. She wrote back:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWe would not be able to give you a famous person’s address. If you want to write a letter to Ms. Ephron, we would deliver it to her ourselves. The fee would be $495. Proceed?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eProceed. Christiansen’s check and letter arrived shortly thereafter. Porteous handled the letter with caution, as if it contained a nuclear code. He held the envelope to the light to examine it. He rotated the edges. He peered through the fibers of the paper and checked the pockets for powders.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe note was clean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe read it. Lyle’s letter to Ephron was a pitch for a movie. Lyle wanted to base the film on the life and times of a person he knew. The language was vague. The person he knew was quiet and shy. Bashful was Lyle’s word. Mr. Bashful also happened to be a culprit to a major unsolved crime, Lyle said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe also suggested a title for the film: \u003ci\u003eThe Bashful Man in Seattle.\u003c\/i\u003e A tip of the hat to Nora Ephron’s blockbuster, \u003ci\u003eSleepless in Seattle.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReading the bizarre note, Porteous did not attempt to understand it. He wasn’t getting paid to understand it. He hailed a cab to Ephron’s building on Park Avenue and approached the doorman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nora Ephron live here?” he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes,” the doorman said.Porteous placed Lyle’s envelope in the doorman’s white-gloved hands. He then hailed a cab home. Easy money.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the weeks passed, Lyle Christiansen was patient. Did Ephron know he was a retired civil servant living on little income, and paid so much money to send her a note? Ephron’s films were so warm and tender. How could she be so cold and rude as to not respond with a note of her own?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn her home on Park Avenue, Ephron did receive Christiansen’s letter. She saw his note on her kitchen counter and maybe later in the office. Or did it land in the wastebasket with her junk mail? She couldn’t be sure. It disappeared.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Morris, Christiansen was flustered. He decided to write Ephron again. Did she not receive his first letter? Would Porteous deliver it for him? Whatever the fee was, he’d pay it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePorteous was baffled. Why was Christiansen so desperate to reach Nora Ephron? And what was he talking about when he said he knew a person connected with a famous crime? Which crime? How famous?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn e-mails, Porteous prodded for more information. The old man was cagey. He wanted to tell his story to Nora Ephron, give her the exclusive. But Ephron never wrote him back. Lyle finally gave up. He told Porteous everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis hunt started on television.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303009734885,"sku":"NP9780307451309","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307451309.jpg?v=1730752730","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/skyjackisbn-9780307451309","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}