20 de outubro de 2020 , por
1997’s The Ax finds an ordinary man slipping into a dark, dark place and discovering the depths he possesses as he embraces the role of murderer. I have published reviews with Dark Scribes Press, www.HorrorReader.com, and more. The Ax by Donald Westlake is a book no one who has been laid off during our current recession should read, it will give them too many ideas. Next up in the Considering Westlake reading series is a return to Westlake’s most famous (infamous?) I am more in line with one of Westlake’s characters, Jack Ingersoll from Trust Me On This and Baby, Would I Lie?, who often espouses the sad fact that all jobs are temporary and therefore come to an end. He began his career in the late 1950's, churning out novels for pulp houses—often writing as many as four novels a year under various pseudonyms such as, Macavity Award Nominee for Best Mystery Novel (1998), Dean Koontz on the Humorous Suspense Writer You Need to Read. I was recommended this book by a friend, and author, and normally I don't read crime fiction, but I was intrigued enough with the premise to give it a try - a guy who loses his job then in order to secure himself another job, he kills off his competition. For twenty-five years Burke has provided for his family and played by the rules. What do you do when you are over fifty years old, and the company for which you have worked for nearly a quarter of a century is downsizing and gives you the ax? He hatches a bizarre plot to target the job he wants and then eliminate his likely rivals for the position, literally killing off the competition. ), The Ax is a nasty little story about a nasty little topic, but the nastiest of them is the underlying pretense, which still plagues industrial work to this day. Burke Devore has reason - he has been down-sized from the paper company where he worked as a line manager. RIF, for those who are not involved in a company job, stands for reductions in force. Hardcover and paperback artifact editions are relatively easy to locate with a cursory search, but there are no such editions in print at the moment. Seven men to k. Loved this book. Prime members enjoy fast & free shipping, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Video and many more exclusive benefits. Instead, it is a comment about the subject matter he tackled in that particular volume and its relationship to today. In that regard, The Ax is not simply a work in the vein of Robert Bloch, it is a work that stands shoulder to should to one of Bloch’s best protégé’s, the horror/suspense writer David J. Schow. Our protaganist Burke is a regular guy, middle management in a paper factory when he is laid off and then cant find a job for two years. It's written in the 1st person, and with a fun concept: a 51 year old man who has been unemployed for 2 years decides to start killing off the competition for a job he wants. This was the first book I read by Mr. Westlake, but sure as heck wasn't my last. This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. 1997), Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 May 2003. 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. © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. His novels about Parker, a ruthless hitman (written under the pseudonym Richard Stark), are very good. From his attempts to land a new job, to the growing rift between him and his loved ones, Devore knows that he is running out of time. Even though this book wasn't humorous, I still saw the dark irony in it all and enjoyed it. I started in this particular industry about seven years ago (prior to that I participate in academic research as well as independent contract work) and soon after my first foray in, a RIF cycle kicked off. One would think that you would simply get another job. The plan he finally comes up with involves murdering seven men very much like himself, and Westlake's most impressive achievement is to make the serial killings understandable if in no way justified. To see what your friends thought of this book. Change ). There is plenty to consider between this novel’s covers, and chills aplenty at the remorseless and relentless world the protagonist occupies. These are my personal problem. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. But it's certainly a very good crime story and an entertaining satire about one of the downsides of capitalism: enforced redundancy. 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.
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