Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans - discussion

Just after the First World War, the party atmosphere returns to the Big Easy, but someone looks to spoil it. Grocers are being murdered in the dead of night by someone grabbing their axe and hacking them to bits in their own cushy beds. The pattern for each murder is the same: a piece of the door is removed for entry; the axe is borrowed on the property; and the assailant aims straight for the head. Why? How could he fit through that piece in the door? Though the culprit is never revealed, speculations abound, which Geary presents here with his usual gusto.
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