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Overview
The multi-award-winning, widely-acclaimed mystery master Donald E. Westlake delivers a masterpiece with this brilliant, laser-sharp tale of the deadly consequences of corporate downsizing.
Burke Devore is a middle-aged manager at a paper company when the cost-cutting ax falls, and he is laid off. Eighteen months later and still unemployed, he puts a new spin on his job search — with agonizing care, Devore finds the seven men in the surrounding area who could take the job that rightfully should be his, and systematically kills them. Transforming himself from mild-mannered middle manager to ruthless murderer, he discovers skills ne never knew ne had — and that come to him far too easily.
Synopsis
The multi-award-winning, widely-acclaimed mystery master Donald E. Westlake delivers a masterpiece with this brilliant, laser-sharp tale of the deadly consequences of corporate downsizing.
Burke Devore is a middle-aged manager at a paper company when the cost-cutting ax falls, and he is laid off. Eighteen months later and still unemployed, he puts a new spin on his job search — with agonizing care, Devore finds the seven men in the surrounding area who could take the job that rightfully should be his, and systematically kills them. Transforming himself from mild-mannered middle manager to ruthless murderer, he discovers skills ne never knew ne had — and that come to him far too easily.
Jeff Brown
Eerily gripping....The Ax will hold you; you can't forgo finding out how it ends. -- People
Editorials
Washington Post Book World
Satirical, savage, fast-paced...An expertly entertaining suspense thriller [and] a complex morality tale.San Diego Union-Tribune
Compelling, unpredictable, and ultimately terrifying...a novel that grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.Jeff Brown
Eerily gripping....The Ax will hold you; you can't forgo finding out how it ends. -- PeopleNY Times Book Review
A novel of excruciating brilliance...The Ax will gut your soul: it is engrossing and relentless and all too plausible.New York Times Book Review
Dark and delicious.Publishers Weekly
Westlake is a consummate pro who can deliver both the cheerful zaniness of the Dortmunder novels and thoroughly convincing noir. The Ax is one of his darkest efforts, a mesmerizing chiller. It takes a familiar plight -- Burke Devore, a middle-level executive at a paper company, has been downsized out of what he had imagined was a secure lifetime job -- and gives it a terrifying twist. Not content quietly to abandon his decently prosperous existence, Devore searches out the ideal job at the ideal company and then identifies a half-dozen unemployed potential rivals for the spot and sets out to murder them one by one. Devore is quietly methodical, but not all the killings go quite as planned: in one, he has to kill a wife as well; another turns out to be much messier than anticipated; and then, of course, there looms the final necessary slaughter, of the man who holds the desired job. And will the police figure out what links these mysterious killings before Devore has achieved his goal? Writing with deadpan style, Westlake makes Devore's rage utterly believable. What he can't quite manage, however, is to make a convincing serial killer out of someone who is in most respects so normal, even decent and thoughtful. But the suspense is tight as a steel coil, the background sociology is impeccably developed and the book should have upper-level downsizers trembling in their Guccis at the thought of the hideous anguish they are unleashing on the land.Library Journal
Burke Devore, 52, laid off from his middle-management position at a paper mill two years before, decides to eliminate competitors for a dream job at a mill in New York. He places dummy ads in trade journals to attract them, then stalks and kills them (at first with a pistol, later in a variety of disgusting ways -- most in broad daylight, with no witnesses). That's about all there is to this strange novel from the author of the John Dortmunder mystery series, e.g., What's the Worst That Could Happen? (LJ 9/15/96). A potentially compelling look at the effects of long-term unemployment on the psyche of a man of limited prospects and intellect, the result is merely a step-by-step guide to executing innocent people, generally lacking in conflict, irony, and farcical elements. Devore's wife and children are sketchy, and humorous situations are underdeveloped. The point of all this is buried deep. Not recommended.Laurel A. Wilson, Alexandrian P.L., Mount Vernon, Ind.Kirkus Reviews
A downsized line manager plots a murderous way to winnow the competition for his next job, in this unusually somber tale from the reigning king of crime comedy.Though he saw the co-workers dismissed along with him turn instantly from teammates to competitors, Burke Devore knew from the first that they weren't the cause of his misery; the real enemy was the bosses, the board of directors, the shareholders willing to do anything to squeeze every ounce of profit from the paper company that's laid him off. But there's nothing he can do about the enemy, he ruefully acknowledges after two years of anguish; the only way he can claw his way back to a job is to create a vacancy through homicide—having first identified and eliminated the half-dozen most likely fellow-managers he'll be competing with. So he prepares a list of the best-qualified people close enough to his Connecticut home to be realistic competitors; practices firing his ancient Luger; and sets out on a purposeful odyssey to eliminate them. Westlake, the unrivaled master of the formula caper comedy (What's the Worst That Could Happen?, 1996, etc.), rises effortlessly to the challenge of varying these executions, keeping up the tension—even though you know (or think you know) exactly what's going to happen every time—by interspersing them with vignettes of Devore's quietly ruined home life, as his wife, who's obviously taken up with another man, drags him to counseling and his teenaged son is picked up for burglary. What's missing is any sense of cumulative horror or revulsion as Devore, doggedly distancing himself from his targets by reviewing their resumés and thinking of them by their initials, methodically works to make his next job opportunity happen.
Though this lack of affect—especially in the chilly epilogue—is presumably Westlake's point, it sadly limits the range and psychological penetration of this grim '90s update of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.