A TWIST AT THE END. A Novel of O. Henry

Hardback. SIGNED. In an artful blending of history, literature, and vivid imagination, the author has crafted a novel that combines real characters and true crime into a story that is an engrossing work of fiction. Featuring a serial killer in the city of Austin, Texas, which in 1885 Will Porter (aka O. Henry) dubbed the 'Servant Girl Annihilators' - perhaps the first recorded serial murders in America, and like the Whitechapel murders in London's East End in 1888, remained unsolved. The first victims were young black women who worked in the households of Austin's most prominent citizens. The crimes were unspeakable. The authorities baffled. The murders continued month after month until suddenly, the pattern changed. On a bloody Christmas Eve, 2 women, neither of them black and neither of them servants, were horribly murdered, seemingly by the same vicious stalker. One of them was Eula Phillips. Her death was to be a defining event in the life of the young man who would one day become O. Henry. The author has crafted a novel that melds fact with fiction, employing characters both real and imagined. The crimes and trials described actually happened. In real life no satisfactory resolution was reached, but in the course of investigating the crimes, Saylor has come up with his own startling conclusion to a riveting century-old mystery. 462pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. PRESENTATION COPY SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR. F. in f. dw.