Tryst

Hardcover, 352 pages | McClelland & Stewart | True Crime – Murder; True Crime; Social Science – Popular Culture | $27.95 | March 27, 2012 | 978-0-7710-5033-6 (0-7710-5033-X)

Reality and fantasy collide with shocking results in this riveting account of the notorious case of Mark Twitchell – and the police investigation into one of the most bizarre murders in recent memory.

In October 2008, Johnny Altinger, a 38-year-old Edmonton man, was on his way to a tryst with a woman he had met on an online dating website when he emailed the directions to their rendezvous to a concerned friend. He was never seen again. Two weeks before Altinger’s disappearance, independent filmmaker Mark Twitchell began shooting a low-budget horror film about a serial killer who impersonates a woman on an online dating website to lure his victims to their gruesome deaths. But these are just the starting points of the stranger-than-fiction case of Mark Twitchell, a man with a startling plan to turn his life-long love of fantasy and desire for fame into reality:

- Did Twitchell, in a horrific example of life imitating art, act out the grisly premise of his own script?

- Obsessed with Dexter, the popular TV show and book series about a fictional vigilante serial killer, Twitchell assumed Dexter Morgan’s profile on Facebook. But how far did he intend to take his fascination with Dexter?

- Is the shocking document “S.K. Confessions” a graphic work of fiction that, as Twitchell claims, he wrote to promote his film? Or is it a diary he kept of his transformation into a killer, and proof that the police stopped a prolific serial killer at the very beginning?

eBook, 288 pages | McClelland & Stewart | True Crime – Murder; True Crime; Social Science – Popular Culture | $13.99 | March 27, 2012 | 978-0-7710-5034-3 (0-7710-5034-8)

Reality and fantasy collide with shocking results in this riveting account of the notorious case of Mark Twitchell – and the police investigation into one of the most bizarre murders in recent memory.

In October 2008, Johnny Altinger, a 38-year-old Edmonton man, was on his way to a tryst with a woman he had met on an online dating website when he emailed the directions to their rendezvous to a concerned friend. He was never seen again. Two weeks before Altinger’s disappearance, independent filmmaker Mark Twitchell began shooting a low-budget horror film about a serial killer who impersonates a woman on an online dating website to lure his victims to their gruesome deaths. But these are just the starting points of the stranger-than-fiction case of Mark Twitchell, a man with a startling plan to turn his life-long love of fantasy and desire for fame into reality:

- Did Twitchell, in a horrific example of life imitating art, act out the grisly premise of his own script?

- Obsessed with Dexter, the popular TV show and book series about a fictional vigilante serial killer, Twitchell assumed Dexter Morgan’s profile on Facebook. But how far did he intend to take his fascination with Dexter?

- Is the shocking document “S.K. Confessions” a graphic work of fiction that, as Twitchell claims, he wrote to promote his film? Or is it a diary he kept of his transformation into a killer, and proof that the police stopped a prolific serial killer at the very beginning?

Veteran journalist Steve Lillebuen provides a gripping investigative account of the nesting doll intricacies of the case, plunging us into the world of pop culture fanaticism and into the mind of a self-professed psychopath. Drawing on extensive interviews, Lillebuen illuminates what can happen when some of our culture’s darkest obsessions are pushed to extremes.