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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
Job market too competitive? The Ax is a self-improvement book designed to help you shine. Just follow the easy steps outlined by savvy middle manager Burke Devore to gain a significant leg up over your competition
Donald Westlake crafts a rapid, innovative plot using little dialogue. This book is snarky, intelligent and immensely fun. It also should be lauded for its brave ending.
Highly recommended to fans of Tom Ripley, they will adore The Ax.
Donald Westlake crafts a rapid, innovative plot using little dialogue. This book is snarky, intelligent and immensely fun. It also should be lauded for its brave ending.
Highly recommended to fans of Tom Ripley, they will adore The Ax.
Alarming how much the protagonist sounds so much like some narcissists I know. Excellent book.
This is a spoiler-free book review.
“There’s nothing out there but me and the competition and I have to beat the competition. I have to. Whatever it takes.”
I’ve recently discovered a gift that I was unaware I possessed. Apparently I have the “touch” when it comes to discovering good books. And I mean that literally. Our local library’s catalog system is a little clunky so I usually don’t go searching for specific books. I have developed a habit of running my fingers along the spines in the fiction section until one just feels right. I check out the cover and the synopsis and somehow, so far, they have all been winners.
Enter: The Ax by Donald E. Westlake. This mystery/crime thriller shares the story of Burke Devore, an out of work paper industry middle manager with a deeply twisted secret. The story, which takes place during the 90s technology boom has many implications for our current outlook with regard to AI. Put simply – Burke is tired of job hunting and is prepared to take his search to the next step.
One of the highlights of this book that really worked for me was Devore’s casual relationship with the reader. Westlake makes you feel like you’re sitting at one of the diners Burke likes to frequent simply listening to him tell you his story over a cup of coffee. This technique really works to make you trust him early on in the narrative and see him how he sees himself: as a simple, out of work line manager. Slowly we learn how unreliable Burke is as narrator of his own story and that’s just good ‘ole fashioned fun right there!
What didn’t work for me? For starters, I’d hesitate to call this a mystery even though that’s how it’s classified in some cases. There’s not much mystery to this mystery, but there is a lot of deeper meaning. I love a nice short chapter (something about the feeling of progressing through the book, I dunno), but there were chapters throughout the middle that felt a little slow. A lot of information is provided on minute details of the ins and outs of the paper industry and while that works for Burke’s character (he IS his job) it’s not always the most exciting.
Overall I’d give this book 3/5 stars. It was a good, mostly entertaining read and really makes you stop and ponder some tough questions about how we see our jobs and how our jobs see us.
“There’s nothing out there but me and the competition and I have to beat the competition. I have to. Whatever it takes.”
I’ve recently discovered a gift that I was unaware I possessed. Apparently I have the “touch” when it comes to discovering good books. And I mean that literally. Our local library’s catalog system is a little clunky so I usually don’t go searching for specific books. I have developed a habit of running my fingers along the spines in the fiction section until one just feels right. I check out the cover and the synopsis and somehow, so far, they have all been winners.
Enter: The Ax by Donald E. Westlake. This mystery/crime thriller shares the story of Burke Devore, an out of work paper industry middle manager with a deeply twisted secret. The story, which takes place during the 90s technology boom has many implications for our current outlook with regard to AI. Put simply – Burke is tired of job hunting and is prepared to take his search to the next step.
One of the highlights of this book that really worked for me was Devore’s casual relationship with the reader. Westlake makes you feel like you’re sitting at one of the diners Burke likes to frequent simply listening to him tell you his story over a cup of coffee. This technique really works to make you trust him early on in the narrative and see him how he sees himself: as a simple, out of work line manager. Slowly we learn how unreliable Burke is as narrator of his own story and that’s just good ‘ole fashioned fun right there!
What didn’t work for me? For starters, I’d hesitate to call this a mystery even though that’s how it’s classified in some cases. There’s not much mystery to this mystery, but there is a lot of deeper meaning. I love a nice short chapter (something about the feeling of progressing through the book, I dunno), but there were chapters throughout the middle that felt a little slow. A lot of information is provided on minute details of the ins and outs of the paper industry and while that works for Burke’s character (he IS his job) it’s not always the most exciting.
Overall I’d give this book 3/5 stars. It was a good, mostly entertaining read and really makes you stop and ponder some tough questions about how we see our jobs and how our jobs see us.
A very dark novel about unemployment (a condition I'm experiencing right now) and what one man did to get a job. This book is quite unnerving.
To quote Louise Penny: "There is a killer in every village. In every home. In every heart. All anyone needs is the right reason". Burke Devore has reason - he has been down-sized from the paper company where he worked as a line manager. That was two years ago. Now he has his heart set on eliminating the competition. He puts a fake ad in the papers, receives lots of cv's, sorts them according to how "dangerous" they are and begins to cross them off. He wasn't a cold-blooded killer to start with, so he has some initial struggles. Some parts of this story is quite funny, or maybe I just have a morbid sort of humour.
Burke is not a particularly sympathetic character, but I could empathize with his situation anyway. It must be horrible to be unemployed - it's been one of my big fears personally, although I've not experienced it after I was done with school. I don't think a couple of days count in that respect. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. So how long can Burke go on without getting caught and will he reach his goal of employment in exactly the same type of job he did before?
Burke is not a particularly sympathetic character, but I could empathize with his situation anyway. It must be horrible to be unemployed - it's been one of my big fears personally, although I've not experienced it after I was done with school. I don't think a couple of days count in that respect. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. So how long can Burke go on without getting caught and will he reach his goal of employment in exactly the same type of job he did before?
A real page-turner. I had to keep reading just to see how long the narrator would get away with his killing spree. It's now an inadvertent period piece (downsizing became outsourcing became not hiring anyone in the first place, and the narrator hammers his opinions a little too hard), but it's great in showing Burke Devore's descent into psychopathy.
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was gifted to me by my brother following the discovery of a Park Chan-Wook adaptation in the near future.
Enjoyable-if-jet-black satire
Enjoyable-if-jet-black satire
dark
funny
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Like 12 Chairs and other books of that nature, where the main character has to do a similar thing a predetermined number of times (in this case it is 6+1 homicides, not 12 chair guttings), this has some trouble with the variety of the set pieces but overall this is funny and lean enough to offset the thinness and the monotony of the conceit.
I read book to the end only because I was curious to see where the author would ultimately take the story. The main character, Burke Devore, was truly unlikeable.
When asked by a student what it takes to be enlightened, a great spiritual teacher replied: "You must want God as much as a drowning man wants air."
Once, as a teenager, swimming in the rough waves of the ocean, a panic-stricken white haired geezer grabbed my arm and cried out for help. In that instant I knew what it meant for someone to want air so badly he would have pulled me under so he could continue breathing.
The narrator of Westlake's tale, Burke Devore, is one such drowning man gasping for air. In Bruke's case, drowning is being over fifty and unemployed with a wife and kids. Air is a job.
Burke has spent his entire career as a polymer paper specialist. Its the 1990s, the post-Reagan years - he was downsized along with hundreds of other dedicated employees many months ago. The money is about to run out. Burke stands to lose his nice house in Connecticut, his car, his possessions, any remaining shred of respect from his family. As far as Burke is concerned, he stands to lose his life. No doubt about it, Burke Devore needs a job. Fast.
After trying to win a job these past months their way, the way society says you have to win a job, Burke realized the odds were stacked way too high against him, too many other equally qualified job hunters in his specialized field and too few companies looking to fill his position.
Burke Devore knows what he has to do. He goes up to the attic, locates the chest with the Luger pistol his father brought back from Germany as a souvenir after the war. He sets his plan in motion, a plan to pinpoint those other qualified job hunters competing for a polymer paper manager job, his job.
Can he really do it, kill off the competition? With his very life on the line, you bet he can.
American author Donald E. Westlake wrote The Ax at age sixty-five, with more than forty published novels to his credit. Mr. Westlake brings a true writer's wisdom to this work I judge an overlooked classic. Through the magic of entering the heart and mind of Burke Devore, the author makes credible the incredible, plausible the implausible, how an everyday kind of guy, a law abiding citizen can take drastic measures to reclaim his life.
You read The Ax with a combination of shock and fascination. Your jaw drops. Can this really be happening? It can. And the more pages you turn, the more you appreciate the tale's black humor. Wow! Donald E. Westlake. Why haven't I heard of this guy before?
And there's such an acid critique of society. Burke Devore reflects on capitalism's underbelly, how politicians, stockholders and the CEOs are the real enemy. The rich don’t care about a workforce toiling, bleeding sweat and sweating blood to keep their company in the black. Not one bit. What the rich at the top care about is maximizing profit. If merging with another company or moving their plant overseas can squeeze out the most profit, that’s what they’ll do. Thousands of men and women who have created a life around their job means nothing. Let them and their families eat cupcakes. Don't go away mad, gang, just go away.
Burke cracks a wry smile. Fortunate in years past for those blue collar types, steel worker, miners, factory workers - when automation hit and they could be replaced by machines, at least they were unionized. But nowadays when computers replace white collar middle managers like himself, no unions. Your education and professionalism, so the theory goes, gives you benefits enough. What a joke.
Stopping to fuel up his car, Burke considers another solution to his problem: banditry. Simply pop into a convenience store like this one with a Pakistani behind the counter, point the Lugar at his face and demand all the cash in the till. He could rob such a convenience store once a week until Social Security kicks in. Now that’s convenient!
No, that's not the solution. Burke knows the solution.
To find out how Burke will fair in his role as a methodical serial killer, I highly recommend reading The Ax. Middle America never had a more articulate spokesperson.
American author Donald E. Westlake, 1933 - 2008