Too many plot twists?

Can a popular mystery have too many twists? As much as I like a good twist--one damn good twist--I can say without equivocation that after the third significant twist occurring in the last two chapters of a book I was rather enjoying, I felt ground down and a little exploited.

I just finished reading Sins of the Brother by Mike Stewart. Why was I reading it, you ask? It's a ten-year-old book. I'm finishing a suspense novel, and I wanted to see how others who wrote in the genre handled dialogue attribution, sensory detail, and in this case, a mystery told from a single POV throughout, which is precisely my challenge. Though tempted to throw in a few scenes from someone else's POV to ratchet up the tension, i.e., the murderer's, I've chosen to stick with one POV (yes, unlike blockbusters like The Da Vinci Code). But that's a topic for another post.

Anyway, I found Sins of the Brother a good read and surprisingly literary only because I wasn't familiar with the author. He's a very capable writer.

So, why all the kvetching about the twists at the end of this book? Because I'm guessing some of them were added to propel the reader to read the next book in the series featuring the same protagonist. And I may read the next book, however, I wanted more satisfaction at the end of this book, not more twists just to get me to read his next book.

Now, maybe the writer didn't have a choice and the editor wanted to transport readers to Pretzel City en route to buying his next release. Or maybe he did have a choice. If it was his choice, apart from his publishing house's wishes, then he gave me one too many.

It reminds me of singers who go off on a vocal riff during a recording--think Christine Aguilera, if you're not sure what I mean. One riff sounds good so ten riffs must be ten times as good, right? Wrong. The nine other riffs devalues the effectiveness of the one good riff.

My understanding is that this was Stewart's debut novel. Since it was his first book to be published, if they twisted his arm to twist his readers into knots at the end, maybe he was reluctant to argue with them. Or maybe it was his idea entirely.

Sometimes less can be more. He already worked a few great twists into the end of that book. What if there had been two more twists in "The Necklace" after Mme. Loisel learns the necklace she borrowed was nothing more than costume jewelry? That happens to be one of my favorite story endings of all time. Any other twist on top of that would have ruined de Maupassant's perfect literary twist.

Sometimes the novel you write doesn't gel with the one you had in your head. Even if it turns out to be well written as Stewart's was, dumping every last conceivable twist into the story isn't going to fix such a problem. Sometimes cliches are cliche for a reason: Discretion can be the better part of valor. All of which goes to say that I'd rather see the writer serve the story than the series.

What do you think? Are you a the-more-twists-the-better kind of reader? A no-holds-barred-on-the-twists person?