Ice Harvest [Paperback]

Scott Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2000

Loaded guns, ladies of the night, broken neon, broken dreams. Here is a world that is immediately recognizable--through a shot glass at three A.M. This is life with rough edges, in a novel that gives you the straight goods--point blank-- one cold, snowbound Christmas Eve in Kansas. One single night, defined in shadings of black and white, when everything changes. . . .

For most, the city is closing up. For a few outsiders, this night, Christmas Eve 1979, is just beginning. Charlie Arglist is a lawyer saying goodbye to Wichita by revisiting the landscape of his used up life: the cold stare of his angry ex-wife, the empty strip clubs and bars where loneliness turns a profit, the frozen glare of ex-lovers and cops long snuggled in his deep pockets. Club owner Renata, an elegant dish in a smoky dive, dreams of financial prosperity and holds a single frame of a stolen film that could help her achieve them. And there's Vic. He's got a reputation, a bad temper, and a secret worth half a million dollars. Not to mention a knack for bringing people together . . . for the last time. Before the night is over, the decisions they face and the choices they make will irrevocably alter the course of their lives--if they can live long enough to see Christmas Day sunrise.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For all that it involves organized crime, naked women, grumpy bouncers, a serious snowstorm, and a hero with a profound drinking pattern, The Ice Harvest is a quiet little book--noir-ish, certainly, but never to excess. As the novel traces Charlie Arglist's trail around his small Kansas hometown on Christmas Eve, 1979, the lawyer's literal footprints are clear enough, given the whopper of a blizzard that's descended, but his metaphorical path is far less obvious. He's killing time before leaving town, but where is he going? And why?

Scott Phillips' sketch of a crooked lawyer on the lam is amusingly ironic: though there's violence aplenty in the novel--including a morbidly comic finger-breaking scene starring Spencer, a philosophical bouncer at the Sweet Cage, one of the strip clubs Charlie oversees for Bill Gerard--this is Waiting for Godot rather than Goodfellas. Phillips masterfully sets up the reader's expectations for action and adventure, dropping cryptic hints about Charlie's past, present, and future, then gleefully keeps Charlie in a holding pattern, circling from one strip club to another, from bars to massage parlors to his former in-laws' house.

But when the world isn't scripted by Beckett, all waiting games must come to an end. Charlie's gamble--it would be cheating to tell you more than that it involves a little cocaine, a beautiful woman of indeterminate origin, a Christmas package full of cash, and an embarrassing photograph--pays off, and he heads out of town. How far does he get? Well, that's another story--and another opportunity for Phillips to show off the mordant humor that may brand him as the Cohen brothers' literary heir apparent. In his hands, Kansas doesn't seem far at all from Fargo. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Everywhere you look, trashy people are doing trashy things in this darkly delicious debut comic thriller. Set in the middle of a Christmas Eve blizzard in 1979 Wichita, the novel opens with lawyer-turned-petty-mobster Charlie Arglist marking time before an important meeting with his shady partner, Vic Cavanaugh. After this meeting he plans to leave Wichita hurriedly with a load of cash and, presumably, the enmity of its rightful owner, Bill Gerard, the local head of a larger regional crime syndicate. Charlie and Vic run a string of strip bars around Wichita for Gerard, from which they have been skimming cash on the sly. But Charlie, who sets out to visit all the outposts in his "empire" one last time, lets a drunken spirit of Yuletide sentimentality (or maybe spite) trigger an unprecedented (and therefore highly visible) string of improvisations. He comps some of his dancers' shakedown money, causing a riot at a club; he unwisely lets his would-be girlfriend in on one of Gerard's blackmail scams. Then he and his ex-brother-in-law crash the Christmas gathering of their cumulative ex-family, setting off a whole new string of disasters. For Charlie there is only the imminent future of his escape with Gerard's money, and it isn't until he discovers a fresh corpse buried behind Vic's empty house that he realizes that his future isn't what it used to be. Newcomer Phillips's seedy characters are skillfully developed, particularly the semiremorseful Charlie. The frigid Midwestern setting is the perfect frame for Charlie's wretched situation; the time period emphasizes the low-level viciousness of Charlie's contemporaries, and Phillips wastes no time in piling up the bodies. Charlie's final confrontation with Gerard will likely leave readers nauseated with laughterAaltogether not a bad way to debut in crime fiction. Agent, Nicole Aragi at Watkins-Loomis. Rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Picador (November 3, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0330481460
• ISBN-13: 978-0330481465
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Noir Deal, February 2, 2006

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ice Harvest: A Novel (Paperback)

Charlie Arglist is a crooked attorney who, with his associate Vic, has ripped off a large sum of money from his employer, the mob boss of Wichita. It's Christmas Eve, 1979, and Charlie is making the rounds of strip bars, killing time until he can make his escape in the morning. As the long night wears on Charlie gradually realizes that his scheme has gone horribly, horribly wrong. The bodies begin to pile up and Charlie becomes more and more desperate until it all leads to a mordantly ironic conclusion. "The Ice Harvest" is a short, sharp shocker. It's set in the worst year of the worst decade in recent American history, and is wonderfully satirical in its tour of the sleazy stripper-and-porn underbelly of midwestern America.

Like many others I first became aware of this novel because of the John Cusack-Billy Bob Thornton movie version. Screenwriters Robert Benton and Richard Russo came up with some memorably witty dialogue and fleshed out some of the characters like Thornton's Vic, Oliver Platt as Charlie's drunken buddy, and Randy Quaid's scary gangster. But uncertain and meandering direction caused the tension to slacken. Worse, rather than the book's swift decent into hell, the filmmakers imply that Charlie's ordeal has finally made a man out of him, which is a serious misreading of the novel. And they tacked on a ridiculous "happy" ending instead of Phillips' bitter surprise coda.

So stick with the novel. The blurbs on the hardcover edition compare it to James Crumley, Jim Thompson, and James M. Cain. High praise indeed, but "The Ice Harvest" certainly earns it.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Knockout Noir, January 10, 2001

By 

Ms. Nancy F. Jones (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ice Harvest (Hardcover)

I have to love a writer who can tell a great story in under 300 pages. And make no mistake, this is a great story. Mean, lowdown and dirty, with a cast of characters who have not one redeeming quality between them. It all takes place in Wichita on Christmas Eve in 1979. Charlie is a shady lawyer who, with his partner, Vic, has stolen enough money from their mob connected boss to leave town and start a new, better life. While Charlie waits to hook up with his partner, who has the money, and to catch his plane, he wanders aimlessly around town in a snowstorm, visiting the strip clubs owned by his boss, drinking too much, and visiting his angry ex-wife and the children he has always neglected. Phillips captures the lonely, dreary lives of the strippers, drunks and employees of the seedy clubs and bars still open on a snowy Christmas Eve. There's an incriminating photo, a package full of money, and lots of double dealing. Charlie is a man who has some good intentions and impulses, but generally manages to overcome them. It's a violent book, funny and ironic, too. Phillips creates an atmospheric world of lonliness, brutality and sleaze. It's a stunning debut. I can't wait for the follow-up.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just another Crime novel., November 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ice Harvest (Hardcover)

Categorizing this book as another Simple Plan or Fargo does not do it justice. Many of those elements are in this book, but treating The Ice Harvest like a second cousin to those works undermines its excellence. This book is a gem that stands out as a tragic look at what happens to a good man, turned bad, who tries to get started again. Don't miss this one, it is in a league of its own.