The Ax

Burke Devore was a paper company manager for twenty-five years until the day he loses his job through corporate downsizing. For two years he is unemployed, attending many interviews but losing out to other people in the same situation as him with slightly better skills or experience. His marriage is disintegrating and his son is in trouble with the law. He finally has had enough and comes up with a brilliant plan to become employed again by getting rid of his competition. He does have a lot of time to kill after all! There has been a movie made of this story. It is however in French and the setting has changed to Paris. The Ax (Le Couperet) does have subtitles, and there's not a lot of dialogue anyway plus if you've read the book you already know what's going on. Obviously not as good as your imagination reading the book but interesting to see. This is a brilliant novel with an extremely interesting and unique idea. I will definitely think twice the next time I have to send in a resume. I have read most of Westlake's work now after discovering him through this brilliant novel. He's a great author, although nothing shares this unique storyline, check out his other novels as well! Cops and Robbers, Smoke and Help, I am being held prisoner are all great places to start!

Having read hundreds of crime novels and thrillers over the years, I've become pretty jaded, yet this book blew me away. Westlake was able to make me feel every excruciating agonizing moment of DeVore's descent into murder, and the ending is dynamite. Out of the dozens (sometimes hundreds) of novels I read, there is usually only one a year that really stands out. This is one of those books. A classic.

The Ax is the story of Burke Devore, a middle manager, recently laid off from his job where he worked for over 20 years. He can't find another job and so devises a twisted plan to find one. Burke is bitter about his loss and Westlake does a wonderful job conveying that bitterness, which I found remarkably convincing given Westlake's own successes. Burke's story is amusing but Burke himself is utterly despicable. His solution is the ultimate rationalization, one which goes too far over the line. The novel grabs you from the first page and is an engaging, quick read. Enjoy

We've been deluged in recent years by books and movies about serial killers that make various attempts to explain their horrific crimes. The causes often lie on terrible childhood abuse. But what if someone committed a series of murders because he was desperate for a job?That's right, Burke Devore in Donald Westlake's chilling and suspenseful new novel becomes a killer because he's out of a job. A middle manager for years at a paper mill, he's been downsized, and as his insurance and unemployment run out, he and his family sink into increasing fear and despair. His wife works two lousy part-time jobs, his son takes to burglary and is arrested. And Burton just can't get hired in his field.It wasn't supposed to be like that. After all, as he puts it so trenchantly, he's middle class, and so, unlike the poor or the very rich, isn't used "to the idea that life has great swings" of fortune. Instead, "the middle class is used to a smooth progress through life." If you give up the highs, you're supposed to be protected from the lows.Like your company dumping you after years of loyal and productive service--and then offering to retrain you as an air conditioning repairman. Now, who'd bother hiring a man over 50 with a few months of training over someone younger who really wanted to do that job?Fully aware of the surplus of middle managers in his own field, and with more of them "chasing fewer and fewer jobs," Devore craftily finds out who his toughest competition is. And after narrowing the list down to those in his New England region or New York, sets out to kill each one so that the next time a plum job comes up in his area, he'll go to the top of the list.It's an audacious, brutal, and crazy scheme, and Westlake's great gift is drawing you into the domestic and professional tragedy of Devore's life so well that you become weirdly complicit in his quiet rage. You don't want Devore to kill anyone, yet you don't want him to get caught by the police. This disturbing tension propels the book forward over the few gaps. While Devore's relationship with his wife is fully realized, his connection with his two children is less so. And in the brief moments when the tension lets up in this harrowing novel, you may wonder a little about Devore's past. Downsizing, as Devore points out, has to be one of the stupidest business ideas in this century: "trashing productive people from productive careers in productive companies." Taut and creepy, THE AX brings newspaper headlines about downsizing to life in a way only as richly experienced a writer as Donald Westlake can do. It's no surprise, then, that in 1993, the Mystery Writers of America named this author of 40 books a Grand Master.

Donald Westlake's 1997 novel The Ax, shelved in the "mystery" section of my local library, is a sterling example of black humor. (I am reminded of the movie "Heathers" of a few years ago). The premise is simple: Burke Devore, a middle-aged paper company middle manager, has gotten "the ax" from his employer after years of devoted service. He can't find a job, largely because there are so many other newly unemployed middle managers looking for work. Devore decides the only way he can find employment is to kill -- literally -- his competition. I won't spoil the plot or ending by telling how he does this, or whether he finds work. I will say that Westlake writes a funny, shocking, sad, and believable story -- all in the first person as Burke exorcises his demons and blows away the competition -- which kept me up late on a work-night to finish. Burke -- and Westlake -- ask the larger question of why our society is so keen on discarding its most productive members (Burke was clearly very good at what he did for a living) in pursuit of shareholder profits.