Slightly disappointing entry in the 87th series, it’s not that it’s bad, just not as great as most of the stories. It’s a simple, lean tale with little room for the delicious characterisation that makes McBain’s books so good. There’s just the one mystery to solve and little detail about the lives of the cops that are working it. Good payoff though. ( )

A very graphic and gruesome beginning. A man is found murdered with an ax buried in his skull. Hence the title. And the opening nastiness. “To tell the truth, it was all pretty goddamn gory.”

A good story, with a quick pace and interesting characters! Carella and Hawes are the main detectives in this one, and they meet a lot of dead ends, no pun intended!

By the way, what does rhyme with April? ( )

Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes are called to the scene of a gruesome murder where a building superintendent has killed, with an ax left stuck in his head. With their usual aplomb, these two try to find out whodunnit, looking at his crazy wife, agoraphobic son, the players from a small time card game, his war buddies, his "slow" helper at the apartment building who chops wood. McBain eventually reveals a key detail linking suspects, which turns out to be a ruse. ( )

The eighteenth installment of the 87th Precinct, AX is a straight-forward whodunit focusing on Carella and Cotton as they try to figure out why anyone would want to take an ax to an elderly janitor. Plenty of hostile interviews, dead ends, and much to Carella's chagrin, mothers. McBain's attention to the struggles and pitfalls of methodical police work is one of his strong points, and Ax is a perfect example of this.

An interesting angle to this story is how investigating the murder of an individual can dredge up all kinds of past secrets, whether or not they eventually have anything to do with the crime, and how this can complicate an already difficult investigation.

Danny the Gimp plays a role in this investigation (But why is he afraid of revolving doors?), and Carella appears to have finally disembarked from the emotional roller-coaster he was on for the last few novels. ( )

Simple, bare bones detecting around a brutal crime with the most banal of motives. These books are mini masterpieces. ( )