Rating: 
Summary: Gritty Noir Fun
Review: The Ice Harvest is a very short book, barely clocking in at 200 pages. And yet, reading this was the most fun I've had in a while. This is a noir story that goes back to the earlier times of crime fiction, where the likes of Raymond Chandler ruled the genre. This gritty tale of crime is full of twists and turns and surprises. The book has everything you'd dream of finding in a crime novel; sex, drugs, alcohol, violence and, of course, lots and lots of money. Here, we have an attorney, Charlie, who's spending his last night in the city. Christmas eve, during one heck of a freezing rain/snowstorm (and you can imagine the many great gags that emerge out of this situation). Charlie works for people with lots of money, who own lots of bars and strip joints all across town. But Charlie has a secret. He's stolen a great deal of money from his bosses, and now he wants to leave his life behind and take the money with him. Of course, many people do not want to see him succeed and will try to stop him at all cost. The Ice Harvest has a very simple plot. And yet, you can't help yourself, you just want to keep on turning the pages. I loved the characters in this book, especially Charlie, who's your anti-hero par excellence. There is as much to hate as there is to love in him. His choices are often amoral and yet, you also feel sympathy for him in the strangests of times. The book is full of very colorful characters who all end up serving purpose to the plot. Phillips is a born storyteller; from the very first page, he takes you by the hand to bring you along a very wild and very fun ride. He knows when to end a storyline and starts a new one, when to end a joke before it gets old, or when to make a character disappear because he or she simply isn't needed anymore. This, you would only find in a master storyteller, so it is quite surprising to find these qualities in a first novel. If there is one complaint I have about the book, it would be its length. Maybe I would have liked to see more. Then again, I'm not sure that anymore subplot would have helped the narrative. In any case, as it is, The Ice Harvest is a nifty little book that does exactly what it sets out to do; to bring you a few hours of much deserved, much sought-after entertaiment. What more could you want from a crime novel?
Rating: 
Summary: Jim Thompson and David Goodis would be proud
Review: THE ICE HARVEST is as good a first novel as one could hope for. Actually, it's far better than that. I read this tight little noir tale last December during a snowstorm here in Chicago. A few hours, a pint of Old Grandad, and I was thouroughly entertained by the tale of the doomed Charlie Arglist. Arglist is a jerk. A lousy dad, a doublecrossing snake of a lawyer(is that redundant?), and he's about to split town. Somehow I kept hoping he would make it. You could almost call this 'slapstick noir' but it's too well written. In a fair world, this would be held up as a shining example of what literature today ought to be. Novelists like Phillips, and Kent Harrington (Dia De Los Muertos), Zak Mucha(The Beggars' Shore), and Don De Grazia (American Skin), they should be supported and widely read, and given the exposure that the (mostly) hacks of oprah's book club unjustly receive. This is timeless writing and I predict that it will become a classic amongst lovers of truly great fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Bountiful HARVEST
Review: THE ICE HARVEST wonderfully captures a "twilight zone" sense of the semi-surreal as it traces and loops its way through a holiday time in the fictional year of 1979 in the fictional city of Wichita in the fictional state of Kansas. The characters are believable eccentrics and one of author Phillips' strengths is creating the feeling that each of them have as intriguing a tale as the one we are following through Charlie Arglist. Phillips also masterfully creates an atmosphere of quiet unease and steadily mounting tension, that reaches critical mass with startling clarity. The characters' snowy fuzzyness and alcoholic hazes blanket the text seamlessly. Like most crime noir characters, they inhabit a world of fate and doom---but often of their own making. What boosts the novel far beyond the ordinary is the ease with which telling details are gently sprinkled into dialogue and interior monologues. This puts a feeling of time and place subtly into the core of the novel, providing an anchor that permits the development of plot and characters a freedom that might otherwise be cartoonish, but here never is. This is a sterling work that will engage any fan of crime fiction, character studies, explosive violence, dark humor, or superior storytelling.
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