Westlake is one of my favorite crime novelists. He was a prolific author writing over 100 novels dating from the 1950s up to his death in 2008 and beyond (several of his works have been published posthumously). He wrote novels under his own name and under several pseudonyms including Richard Stark that he used for the gritty Parker novels. He also wrote the humorous Dortmunder series which I really enjoy.
The Ax is a stand-alone novel about a man, Burke Devore, who was laid off from his middle management job at a paper company. He has been out of work for two years and finds that there is always someone with a little better experience or a better resume that gets the jobs ahead of him. So what does he do? He comes up with an idea to eliminate the competition by systematically killing better qualified candidates! But can he do this? He is just an ordinary man who had never killed anyone before but he decides that this is his only recourse to get his life and marriage back on track.
This is a very well written noir novel that makes you wonder how far someone can go to achieve his goals. Does the end justify the means? Overall a high recommendation for this one and I would also recommend most anything else written by Westlake if you are into crime fiction.
The Ax is a stand-alone novel about a man, Burke Devore, who was laid off from his middle management job at a paper company. He has been out of work for two years and finds that there is always someone with a little better experience or a better resume that gets the jobs ahead of him. So what does he do? He comes up with an idea to eliminate the competition by systematically killing better qualified candidates! But can he do this? He is just an ordinary man who had never killed anyone before but he decides that this is his only recourse to get his life and marriage back on track.
This is a very well written noir novel that makes you wonder how far someone can go to achieve his goals. Does the end justify the means? Overall a high recommendation for this one and I would also recommend most anything else written by Westlake if you are into crime fiction.
