A Chilling Contemporary Drama

The life of the working person in America has changed over the past few decades. Where we once put in our thirty or thirty-five years with a large company and retired, today we get downsized, re-aligned, outsourced, or otherwise fired. Hosts of former middle managers find themselves on the streets, looking for similar positions that simply no longer exist.

In Ax, Donald Westlake examines this event in the life of a paper mill's purchasing manager who suddenly is downsized right out of his job. He looks for work for several years without success. He becomes desperate. What does he do? Well, Donald Westlake tells us what one man might do if he were sufficiently desperate and sufficiently clever.

This decent, everyday kind of guy finds a person in a job that he would like to have. Then he kills him. He has also found out who the primary competitors for the job will be and systematically eliminates them, as well. He hates doing it, but he has to live, doesn't he?

You'll shudder as you read this, because it seems so plausible, so real. Explore the darker side of the denizens of suburbia in this one.