The city of Austin, Texas, "is fearfully dull," wrote young Will Porter to a friend in the spring of 1885, "except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively in the dead of night."

Years later, Will Porter would become famous as O. Henry, the toast of New York and the most celebrated writer in America. The long-ago Texas killings, which he dubbed the work of the Servant Girl Annihilators -- perhaps the first recorded serial murders in America -- would remain unsolved. But the appearance of a merciless blackmailer and a mysterious stranger would draw Porter back into the past, and back to Texas, to confront the stunning solution to those murders -- and the secrets of his own soul.

When he was a young man in Austin in that spring of 1885, Porter fell in love. Her name was Eula Phillips. She was beautiful. She was married to someone else. And she was doomed to be a victim of the Servant Girl Annihilators.

The first victims were young Black women who worked in the households of Austin's most prominent citizens. The crimes were unspeakable. The authorities were baffled. The murders continued, month after month, until suddenly, shockingly, the pattern changed. On a bloody Christmas Eve, two 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 inthe life of the young man who would one day become O. Henry. The trial that resulted -- uncovering one explosive scandal after another -- would tear the city of Austin apart.

The capitol of Texas was a city in uneasy transition. Only a few years earlier, outlaw gangs and Comanche Indians had roamed the hills where now stood the homes of cattle barons and university professors. The animosities of the Civil War still lingered, and the struggle of Blacks for equality was just beginning. By day, politicians in the state legislature debated equal rights for women; by night, those same politicians mingled with the high-class prostitutes of Guy Town, the city's notorious vice district. Southern traditions of manners and decorum concealed ugly secrets, all of which would be revealed before the saga of the Servant Girl Annihilators reached its end.

Against this remarkably rich background, Steven Saylor, author of the acclaimed "Roma Sub Rosa" series, has crafted a novel that melds fact with fiction, employing characters both real and imagined. The crimes and trials described in "A Twist at the End" 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.

The result is a masterful novel of intrigue and murder, yet at the same time a romance of time and place, with a colorful cast of memorable characters brought vividly to life. It's a true tale of Texas, grand in both setting and scope.

Amazon.com Review
Austin, Texas, 1885. Manhattan, 1906. Twenty-year-old ghosts haunt Will Porter, a.k.a. famous writer O. Henry, who may have changed names and cities but hasn't outrun the memory of a series of murders that cast a chilling shadow over a sunny and bustling town. In A Twist at the End, Steven Saylor, author of the Roma Sub Rosa mystery series (Rubicon, The House of the Vestals, A Murder on the Appian Way, The Venus Throw), riffs on reality: brutal and sadistic, the "Servant Girl Annihilator" killed seven Austin women in 1885, but the murders were never solved. Saylor weaves together murder mystery and love story, historical exploration and fictional creation, combining careful research with artistic license to hazard a potential solution to the now-obscure mystery.

Will is summoned back to Austin by a mysterious stranger bearing a letter whose author claims to have discovered the perpetrator of the hideous crimes; Saylor cleverly frames the story as a series of flashbacks during Will's trip to Texas. The sense of the train moving both forward, west toward Austin, and backward, deep into the past, accelerates the story itself, creating a foreboding sense of portent. Will himself is an engaging protagonist: "He considered himself to be fairly well-rounded, for a self-educated fellow. He could throw a lariat, quote from Idylls of the King, and grow an exceedingly fine moustache. Despite this résumé, once in Austin he had encountered some difficulties in earning a livelihood." His youth and naiveté are compelling counterpoints to the gritty boisterousness of the capital city, which Saylor evokes with careful precision.

Saylor has a light touch with historical irony. All too often, writers wrestle unsuccessfully with the temptation to have their characters make claims that we know, with all the wisdom of hindsight, will be disproved. The trick is to do this without making readers feel they've been poked sharply in the ribs (Do you get it? Do you get it?), and Saylor exhibits the commendable talent of grounding his characters' thoughts and observations in their historical context; they never seem forced or sly.

Unfortunately, the urge toward verisimilitude carries its own risks. Too often, Saylor will weave an item of historical record into his narrative--the so-called Female Clerks bill, for example--then seem oddly compelled to dispose of it; he brusquely states its actual outcome and drops it forevermore. The reader has the impression of a file drawer sliding shut (perhaps the one labeled "Historical Atmosphere"). Such moments, though they testify to Saylor's familiarity with Texas history, rupture the flow of the narrative.

The opening of the novel is so successful--with its O. Henry-esque twist that leaves readers ruefully shaking their heads, realizing too late the author's trickery--that one expects great things from the conclusion. Sadly, Saylor falls short of his own inspiration; the dénouement may be logical, but it certainly is neither startling nor ironic, and what, after all, is an O. Henry story without irony? --Kelly Flynn