As a mystery writer, Jon A. Jackson has more or less claimed the landscape of Detroit as his territory. He has made it his own over time, and through the splendid series ofnovels he has written that feature the character and voice of Detective Sergeant "Fang"Mulheisen. So it is only logical that Jackson eventually takes on one of the great lingering mysteries of that landscape: the disappearance, in 1975, of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.

Because Jackson is a serious and important novelist, however, he makes MAN WITH AN AXE more than a conjecture upon the whys and hows of one man's vanishment. Jackson also involves his detective/hero and his novel with the whole matter of history and historical narrative. Detective Mulheisen finds himself investigating not the Hoffa case, but the story of the Hoffa case, as narrated to him through the journals of his old and now-dead colleague, Grootka. These journals come to Mulheisen gradually and purposefully, left as a sort of historical legacy to Mulheisen by Grootka, who apparently (if one believes Grootka's history) had direct involvement in Hoffa's disappearance; they also provide a version of history that Mulheisen must try to reconcile with the story that he has come to accept as the historical record.

Jackson enriches his novel with the rich detail of the detroit jazz culture. As always, Jackson is interested in what makes his city tick; because so much of the urban spirit of Detroit is wrapped up in the music of that place, Jackson immerses readers in the complex traditions of that music. Indeed, the "axe" in MAN WITH AN AXE comes to have several meanings before the novel's end.

Ultimately, perhaps the finest thing about this novel is the compelling voice of "Fang" Mulheisen. It is Mulheisen who tells us this story, and it is Mulheisen whom readers come to believe as storyteller and as historian. Jackson has succeeded in creating--and sustaining--a vital, human, engaging character in this detective/hero.

The Seattle Times, March 5, 1998

by Adam Woog
Special to The Seattle Times

BOOK REPORT ''MAN WITH AN AXE''

Jon A. Jackson will autograph ``Man with an Axe'' at noon Tuesday at Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St., Seattle; 206-587-5737. Jon A. Jackson knows how to do a book tour right. Not for him is the exhausting trudge from airport to hotel to bookstore signing . . . and then on to the next city to go through it all over again.

"If I did that, I wouldn't be able to golf," the Montana-based mystery writer cheerfully said by phone from a layover in Tucson,Ariz.
"It's hard to carry golf clubs around on an airplane."

For his current modest tour of West Coast cities, therefore, Jackson simply threw a golf bag into his pickup truck and drove off from his home in Missoula. This one-man golfing-and-autographing
tour is in support of "Man with an Axe" (Atlantic Monthly Press, $23), the sixth in Jackson's wily series of novels about Detroit police detective Fang Mulheisen.

Mulheisen got his nickname from his foxlike smile, as well as his tendency to seriously chomp down on disturbing bits of evidence. He's a man of action as well as reflection, and if he doesn't know where the bodies are buried he can usually figure it out. Fang's deadpan, slightly mordant character fits well with author. Jackson's laconic tone, as well as with the series' unpredictable,
feint-and-jab style of plotting. You never quite know what's going to come next in a Mulheisen book.

Piecing the PartsTogether

In the case of "Man with an Axe," things kick off as a series of seemingly unrelated incidents - ambiguously violent e-mail, a headless body released by spring thaws from an icy river, and a
lovely doctoral student nosing in the history of the Detroit police - that begin to knit together.

The trail sends Mulheisen on a not-so-sentimental journey to trace some strange events dating from the 1970s. He finds himself piecing together a story involving, among other things, a brilliant Detroit jazz musician, an all-black resort community, and the King Daddy of all Motor City mysteries: the disappearance of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. To guide himself, Mulheisen must decipher notebooks left by his now-dead mentor on the force, a legendary tough guy known as Grootka. Much of the book is told in flashback, in fact: We tag along as Mulheisen tracks down the notebooks that Grootka cannily hid all over town, as we hear Grootka's strange tale unfolding from the past.

The book's title, by the way, is a double-edged joke. Yes, it's a reference to the usual sort of sharp-and-blunt implement of destruction. But "axe" is also a jazzman's slang for his instrument,
and a key theme in the story is the profound love of jazz shared by Grootka and Mulheisen.

Running through "Man with an Axe" is a sense of the explosive power of hidden history, as well as a simple fondness for good stories about Detroit.

About the author

Though Jackson has lived in the West for more than half of his 58 years, he was born and raised in Michigan and visits his old home regularly. His voice still betrays traces of a Detroit accent.
Though portions of the Mulheisen books take place in other parts of the country, Jackson said that for the most part, he likes setting them in the gritty confines of Motown.

"I like to write about Detroit - it's a good urban scene for a crime story. I'm familiar with it, I know the neighborhoods and the history. And some guys you just can't imagine outside their settings," he said. "Mulheisen is definitely a Detroit guy - every once in a while he thinks about relocating to some place like Montana, but we know: naah, couldn't be."

Jackson is currently at work on another Mulheisen book, "LaDonna Detroit," in which a female hoodlum, a nasty customer reappearing from previous books, is groomed to be the town's next Mafia don. And this summer Jackson also will publish a non-mystery, "Go by Go," a historical novel set in the rough-and-tumble world of Montana labor violence earlier in the century.

Meanwhile, he's also working on his golf swing.

MAN WITH AN AXE, the seventh book in Jon A. Jackson's addictive series about Detroit homicide
detective sargent "Fang" Mulheisen begins on the day of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, July 30, 1975. Tenor sax player Tyrone Addison reluctantly rescues the labor leader from gangster killers and hides him at his uncle's house on Turtle Lake, a black resort in upstate Michigan. Twenty years later, long after both Hoffa and Addison have disappeared, Mulheisen finds a series of notebooks left by his jazz-loving mentor Grootka and reopens his late friend's investigation. Mulheisen is, as always, a smart, mordant observer of his hometown's eccentricities, and the sounds of vintage jazz can be heard in the background. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title

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, MAN WITH AN AXE, 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.

Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved

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. MAN WITH AN AXE 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.

Detroit Detective Sergeant "Fang" Mulheisen is about to begin an investigation into the mystery surrounding a headless corpse when a young kid arrives with an e-mail cartoon message addressed to Mulheisen. Soon the detective is being led on a scavenger hunt that takes him into modern jazz history, the Detroit police archives, and the notebook diaries of Grootka, his now-dead mentor .

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

(Booklist/February 15, 1998)