After unsuccessfully pursuing employment for 18 months, Devore begins to hunt down the seven men in his local area who could take the job that rightfully should be his.

[1] A few weeks after Westlake began writing, the New York Times published a series of newspaper articles about the trend of corporate downsizing.

In the process of writing, Westlake reflected on his parent's experiences of unity during the retrenchment during the Great Depression, in juxtaposition to the workers who were now being made redundant "even as the economy booms, unemployment falls and the stock market soars.

[2] The New York Times described the novel as "Satirical, provocative and tightly plotted, The Ax handily swipes at management stupidities without ever letting up on suspense.

"[3] The Washington Post called the novel "a tour de force of narrative immediacy" and posited it was in the same lineage as "Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley and the film classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, not to mention the Heinrich von Kleist novella Michael Kohlhaas"[4] Charles Taylor from The Nation stated "...what makes The Ax so unnerving and so believable is the absence of irony in Burke's voice.