Ed McBain: Ax (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
Eighty-six-year-old George Lasser was the superintendent of a building in the 87th Precinct until just recently. Unfortunately his tenure ended in the building's basement with a sharp, heavy blade of an ax in his head...

There are no witnesses, no suspects, and no clues. The wife and son? They're both a little off-kilter, but they have alibis. Just when Carella and Hawes are about to put the case on the shelf, the killer strikes again. Now the detectives are hot on the trail of a man crazy enough to murder with an ax.

One of the 87th Precinct series' finest installments, Ax is a sharp, intense crime thriller that is classic Ed McBain. The New York Times hails it as "the best of today's police stories -- lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory."

Ed McBain: Ax. An 87th Precinct Novel. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181561 (March, 2012), 186 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Ax (USA 1977)

From the Publisher:
THE CRAZY KILLER TOOK AN AX AND GAVE HIS VICTIM LOTS OF WHACKS...
Name: George Lasser; Age: 87; Autopsy Results: Death caused by numerous blows with an ax; Suspects: None...
Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, and the boys of the 87th Precinct knew where, when, and how George Lasser died, but what they didn't have a clue to was who had given him the ax. Of course, it had to be some kind of maniac, and, true, Lasser's wife and son were both kind of screwy. But they also had the kind of alibis that couldn't be cracked. So that left Steve and Cotton with a big zero in the loony ax murderer department. Then, just when they were about to shelve the case, the mad marauder struck again...

"The best of today's police stories -- lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory." -- The New York Times

Ed McBain: Ax. An explosive sizzling 87th Precinct Mystery. Signet, ISBN: 0451076540 (September, 1977), 158 p., $1.25.

Ed McBain: Axe (UK 1975)

From the Publisher:
January brought a sunless lack of cheer to the 87th Precinct.

There would be no happy new year for George Lasser. An axe had split his skull wide open. It was pretty goddamn gory.

Then someone killed a cop. Before only an eighty-year-old janitor was dead. Now it was a cop. There was a big difference.

It looked like being a lousy month for Detectives Hawes and Carella...

Ed McBain: Axe. An 87th Precinct Mystery. Pan Books, ISBN: 0330244108 (June, 1975), 141 p., 50p.

Ed McBain: Axe (UK 1968)

From the Publisher:
The axe had been wedged into tre janitor's skull, splitting it wide open... that's how Steve Carella's most complex case began.

The 'leads' lead in all directions: a too obvious Negro suspect; a small-time crap-game; a pre-war tax swindle; the janitor's mad wife and strange son, both expensively cared for...

When the next victim is an 87th Precinct man, a slow-burning case flares into a red-hot outrage and every available cop sets out on a personal manhunt for the killer.

Ed McBain: Axe. An 87th Precinct Mystery. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, 157 p., 4'-.

Ed McBain: Ax (USA 1965)

From the Publisher:
"The police photographers were nnapping pictures. The medical examiner was pronouncing the man dead. The lab boys were chalking his position on the cellar floor before carting him off to the morgue for autopsy -- as if autopsy were needed with an ax sticking: out of his head..."
HE WAS DEADER THAN HELL

Ed McBain: Ax. An 87th Precinct Mystery Novel. New York: Pocket Books, 1965, 158 p., 50¢.

Ed McBain: Ax (USA 1964)

From the Publisher:
In 1959, Anthony Boucher, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: "Regular readers of this column know that I esteem Ed MeBain's novels of the 87th Precinct as the best of today's procedural school of police stories lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory."

Since then fifteen novels (and three novelettes) have been added to this now famous series. All of these McBains have been greeted by rave reviews from the critics and hailed with warm pleasure by his myriad readers.

Ax is no exception.
In this new one McBain continues to be the versatile storyteller who knows how to grip the reader from the first sentence as he immediately sets the scene in a dark, damp cellar where a man is sprawled on the concrete floor, an ax in his head. Twenty minutes later Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes have arrived, to begin the investigation of one of the weirdest cases on record in the 87th Precinct.

This is murder with a bold splash of the macabre and a shatteringly ironic twist of motive.

Ed McBain: Ax. An 87th Precinct Mystery Novel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964, 192 p., $3.50.