Axe Murders as Far as the Eye Can See

I’ve not read Rachel McCarthy James’s first book, a true crime story called The Man from the Train, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. She did much of the research for that book and is credited as co-author alongside her father Bill James. The book focuses on a series of unsolved and horrific axe murders of entire families that happened in small towns across the US and Canada in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The James’s make the case for a single murderer, who they identify — an itinerant lumberman. This serial killer travelled from town to town, and murder to murder, by train, thus the title.

McCarthy James’s interest in axes and axe murder, and her abilities as a researcher and writer are again on display in this new book Whack Job. It’s an episodic history of the axe and its use as an instrument of murder.

The author takes us far back in history to discuss early usage of axe-like tools, which really grew in utility once they were attached to a handle. Both a tool and a weapon, the axe is an object more commonly used than the sword and one that can combine the utility of other early tools like the hammer and the knife. Because of their many uses axes, at least up until recent times, were commonly found in most homes.

More recently axes, and axe murderers, have become objects of humor — things to be made light of - as in the line “what if your blind date is an axe murderer?”, and McCarthy James has a bit to say on that topic as well.

Anyway, with that history behind us the book then moves on to the main feature - twelve chapters, arranged chronologically, each focused on a specific set of events featuring murder committed with an axe. The first axe murder dates back some 430,000 years. The most recent chapter focuses on an incident that happened in 1980.

The tone is mostly light, if sometimes wondering off into the clinical. Nevertheless, the incidents covered are all really interesting on their own, and for different reasons. The first, for example, happened so long ago we can’t know what really happened nor who the people involved were. That story focuses more on the archeology of the site where the murder victim’s bones were discovered, called appropriately the “Pit of Bones”, and located in north-central Spain.

The latest incident, from the 1980s, has lots of personal detail and McCarthy James’s account of it reads like a soap opera.

You get the point. Somewhat like the itinerant lumberman traveling by train in her first book, here she takes her readers on a roller coaster ride twisting and turning from one crime scene to another, sometimes viewing the murder from on high and other times in close detail. That’s not a bad thing, as it’s an interesting roller coaster ride.

I certainly enjoyed this book and think it would make a great beach read for a true crime buff. Its biggest drawback for me though, was that it didn’t seem to have a serious point to make.

What do I mean by that? Well, I like to walk away from reading a history book feeling that I’ve learned something — even an episodic history book like this one. And by “learned something” I don’t necessarily mean something useful, but at least something “good to know”, if that makes sense.

With Whack Job there isn’t an attempt to tie each of its episodes back to any overarching point other than “these murders were all committed by axe”. Honestly, I think that IS the author’s point. I imagine she’s culled through dozens more axe murders to boil her book down to these twelve selections. And that effort is rewarded by my, and hopefully other reader’s, reactions to the book. I walked away entertained, and I expect that’s as the author wanted. But I don’t feel particularly enlightened by my roller coaster ride, which is a let-down for me, and why I’ve given the book three stars.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: A great beach read for the true crime buff; author Rachel McCarthy James takes us on a roller coaster ride of axe murders throughout history.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I read an advance reviewer’s copy of the ebook, provided courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, St Martin’s Press. The book will be published next Tuesday, May 13th.