Steven Saylor: Honour the dead

By MICHELE HEWITSON

In New York City, 1906, William Sydney Porter writes stories to be published under his pen name: O Henry. He is visited by a well-dressed woman who is blackmailing him. In Porter's past is a sentence for embezzlement and a connection with Austin, Texas where, in 1885, a number of black servants were slain in their beds. The bloodhounds are brought in. A number of innocent black men are accused. Then a white woman is found murdered. The woman is Eula, who is unhappily married to a drunk and who Porter has been secretly seeing.

In Saylor's fictional investigation we get a resolution, but Honour the Dead is as much concerned with prying open the secrets of the South in the wake of the Civil War.

There is corruption and jostling for position, bigotry and rough justice. The town's madam openly plies her wares to senior officials and lawmakers, the whorehouse is the most select boy's-own club. An old-fashioned whodunnit in keeping with its historical attention to detail and tone, Saylor is as good a storyteller as his fictionalised O Henry.

Constable & Robinson

$29.95