Possible Clues:

• Evoking O. Henry
• Expressing a dramatic reversal
• Twisty?
• A form of sarcasm, may sound perverse
• Flattening, I see, or perhaps the opposite
• Club with very cold water but no English bitter?
• Strange and perverse
• How flattening, perhaps, not to mean it
• Sardonic driver possibly in charge
• 'Isn't it ___?'