Donald Westlake's The Ax (1997) is a timely novel about the extremes that a recently-laid off paper mill employee would go to insure that he keeps a leg up on the competition.
If you've never read - or heard of - the late Westlake (1933-2008), you're missing out on a grand American crime craftsman: a meticulous, hard-driving, bleak, blackly funny writer of criminals and average Joes driven to murder and robbery and other fun stuff. Westlake wrote dozens and dozens of novels, often under various pseudonyms - most notably Richard Stark, the man behind the propulsive Parker novels (most recently on screen in this past weekend's Jason Statham-starrer Parker). Westlake also wrote screenplays, from the great The Stepfather to The Grifters (which earned Westlake an Oscar nod.
The Ax is a stand-alone novel about a a seemingly ordinary New England fiftysomething man who is let go/downsized from the paper company he had put over twenty years in. Out of work for two years, he comes up with a scheme to ensure that the job he is now seeking will be his and his alone: He creates a fake company in a trade journal and calls for the resumes of interested applicants. After collecting the applications, he rifles through them and determines which of the prospective employees are more qualified than him for the job he thinks will come open and decides to kill them. No more regional competition. The novel follows his attempts to kill every one of his competitors.
What gives the novel great shading and texture is the meticulousness (sorry to use that word again, but it's the one that keeps coming to me...) in which Burke goes about his business. Fascinated by detail, Westlake makes Burke precise and careful, Westlake pays great attention to the roads and landscapes and homes Burke drives through and past - murder becomes routine, almost blase, just a part of the everyday environment. Naturally, Westlake sees a parallel between Burke's ruthlessness and that of the corporate goings-on that led him - and thousands of others - to be out of work. In Westlake's world, everyone is out for themselves.
An allegory of our times, the novel does something utterly remarkable: We find ourselves rooting for Burke, much as we do for Dexter Morgan. We give our allegiance to him because he becomes a sort of bastion for us in a world run by the faceless powers-to-be. The authors evidently knows the world of business - of passive-aggressive throat-cutting and ensuing pacification, doublespeak, middle-management hell - very well.
Thoughtful, intelligent, perfectly-paced, informative, and, above all, tense and a lot of fun, The Ax really hits hard.
Grade: A-
*
- 8 out of 13 on my SAG predictions last night. Not bad. I'll be happy when Alec Baldwin is no longer eligible to win a Best Actor award for 30 Rock. Seven straight years? Seriously? I am glad, however, that Downton Abbey's superb ensemble won.
- I threw in the towel on the Melissa George spy drama Hunted, which was cancelled after its 8-episode first season run on Cinemax but might end up getting picked up by another network. Reputed to be in the same vein as Alias or Covert Affairs... well, take my word for it. It's not! Dark, dreary, overly complicated, and no fun at all.
- Weekend box office:
The ludicrous-looking Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (mysteriously starring Jeremy Renner) took hope the top honors, despite unanimous panning. Mama, a surprise hit, continued doing strong, earning the second-place prize. Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty, opening at more theaters, came in third and fourth, respectively, both now earning around $70 million The aforementioned Parker opened in a weak fifth, despite its star power of Statham and J-Lo. Movie 43 bombed.
Image courtesy of:
http://robertarood.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/ax.jpg
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