Will I love The Ax?

Westlake is one of my favorite authors. His best-known works are his humorous John Dortmunder crime capers, but this book is a freestanding work with a brilliance all its own. Imagine an ordinary businessman sacked in corporate downsizing and desperate to land a new job…so desperate that he’ll literally kill the competition to get it.

I found it impossible to put down as I followed Burke Devore, someone not truly a “bad guy,” plan, prepare for, and carry out murder after murder. But what dazzled me most was how Westlake morphed a chilling crime spree into a grand metaphor for… show more.

Donald Westlake was the consummate professional, a writer’s writer with more than a hundred novels to his credit. 

Specializing in crime fiction, he created the blockbuster Parker series and was so prolific he needed a half a dozen pseudonyms just to avoid competing with himself in the marketplace. This book is his masterpiece. Period. Full stop. And if the first sentence doesn’t grab you, nothing will:

I’ve never actually killed anybody before, murdered another person, snuffed out another human being.

So let the games begin!

It's the 1990s. Not exactly morning in America for Burke Devore.

Getting the ax from his mid-level executive job, in middle age, with a house and cars and two kids to put through college, has rendered Burke a desperate man. And very bitter about the new capitalist logic.

Even "healthy companies, firmly in the black," downsize people like Burke to pander to "stockholders' drive for return on investment."

In this pitch black, gruesomely funny thriller, Burke decides to literally kill off the competition for a coveted job at a paper mill.

Westlake, an absolute master, has the reader both sickened… show more.