Man with an Axe (Detective Sergeant Mulheisen, Book 7) - Softcover

Jackson, Jon A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802136036 ISBN 13: 9780802136039

Publisher: Grove Press, 1999

Synopsis

It's springtime in Detroit and Detective Sergeant "Fang" Mulheisen has settled in for a period of repose - he thinks. But when a young kid arrives with an E-mail cartoon message addressed to Mulheisen depicting a murder and an alluring young historian suddenly wants to know all about Grootka, Mulheisen begins a scavenger hunt to uncover the notebooks Grootka left behind. It turns out that Grootka knew a lot more than he ever told Mulheisen, or anyone. Such as what happened to Jimmy Hoffa one lonely weekend in an isolated African-American resort town on the Great Lakes, and the advice Grootka gave him: "When push comes to shove, kick is better." Mulheisen soon discovers that neither the young historian nor modern jazz's rising star is what he seems.

About this title

From Booklist:

Through five novels, Jackson's Fang Mulheisen series quietly established itself as perhaps the toughest, most darkly comic, consistently superior American procedural on the market. Then, with the publication of Dead Folks (1996), the chorus of critical praise grew to a crescendo, and the word was finally out. Now comes number seven, and there is no reason to stop shouting. Jackson bites off a lot here--a plot hinging on who killed Jimmy Hoffa; a narrative structure in which much of the story is told in the form of a dead cop's diary--but for the most part, he pulls it off superbly. The diary interludes impede narrative flow just a bit, but they allow Jackson to resurrect Fang's delightfully obscene former partner, Grootka, who posthumously leads Fang on a scavenger hunt into the past, revealing not only what happened to Hoffa but also why it happened and who was involved. The explanation has the ring of plausible speculation, but more important, it works as fiction, as does the parallel plot strain involving a saxophone player who makes the mistake of giving Hoffa a ride. Like Loren Estleman's Amos Walker series and the early Elmore Leonard novels, Jackson makes the most of Detroit's mean streets and Mob-stained history, but in addition to these obvious connections, the rumpled, jazz-loving, crotchety but empathetic Fang has a perfect complement across the ocean in the form of John Harvey's bedraggled British copper, Charlie Resnick. Anyone who sits on the hard-boiled side of the aisle and hasn't yet met Fang Mulheisen is in for a rare treat. Bill Ott

From Kirkus Reviews:

Jackson, who doesn't seem able to let go of any of his beloved stable of Detroit cobs-and-robbers--Sgt. Fang Mulheisen, his late mentor Grootka, mob boss Carmine Busoni, and his successor Humphrey DiEbola--till he's drained them of every secret, hits on a honey of an idea to bring Grootka back from the grave: implicate him in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. This round begins when budding historian Agge Allyson comes to Mulheisen thinking of Grootka as a typical Detroit cop on whom she can hang her social history of police-community relations in the city. It soon turns out, in case anybody ever doubted it, that Grootka is anything but typical; in fact, he's one of the few people who knows what happened to Hoffa after he got a fateful lift with jazzman Tyrone Addison and Tyrone's wife Vera back in 1975, and he's dying (although dead) to tell Mulheisen all about it, or almost all, in a series of notebooks he's stashed away as carefully as clues in a treasure hunt. Mulheisen's search for the long-buried truth, while less fast and funny than his recent outings among Carmine's heirs and assigns (Dead Folks, 1996, etc.), becomes an unexpectedly elegiac meditation on history and the past. Oh, and if you think Hoffa was executed by his mobbed-up associates and laid to rest in the end zone of Giants Stadium, has Jackson got a wagonload of surprises for you. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0802136036
• ISBN 13: 9780802136039
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240