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.
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.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointing and Emotionless
Review: The main character (Charlie Arglist) is amazing emotionless as he carries out many first times acts of violence and deceit. The first time you shoot and/or kill someone let have some emotion, thought or even maybe a little self-doubt. The main character almost seemed bored by running around town, killing people. He seemed more annoyed at the car troubles then in burying a few bodies. I am not going to waste my time going over every detail but I found this book to be flat.
Rating:
Summary: Gleefully icy noir with a taste for lowlife
Review: The obvious comparisons the reviews are making are to Fargo (yes, it's blackly funny and full of snow) and A Simple Plan (whose author is quoted on the back). I'd add Fredric Brown's His Name is Death-- another book about a guy who doesn't plan to be a murderer but winds up shedding gallons of blood everywhere he goes during one long night. And maybe the legendary Christmas episode of Dragnet, for its picture of Christmas Eve as experienced by barflies and strippers and everyone who doesn't have a home to go to even on that night. The first part of the book has an authentically Jack Webbian feel for low-rent lowlife, taking us on an amusing tour of the skanky, pathetic underworld of a place like Wichita, where only a few regulars manage to keep the hot spots from closing up by 8:00 (though there's some hope of business picking up once church gets out). You're just about thinking that you've seen enough of that when Phillips drops the ax with a loud, wet thud, and then it's a breathless ride to grisly disaster for everyone Charlie Arglist meets. Christmas Eve proves to be a wonderfully mordant backdrop for the mayhem this book perpetrates, the one night that a sleepy place like Wichita is even more somnescent, and by the time that Charlie is disturbing a small child by rifling a Christmas tree in the wee hours of the morning, you know you've found the noir Christmas fable to serve as the antidote to all the Grinch-mania and commercial cheer that's about to descend on us. Ho ho ho, indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: Great start; Better Middle; Weak Ending
Review: This book nearly lived up to its hype. Darkly funny, suspenseful, and fun to read--until Charlie does something so out of character it leaves me scratching my head. The overly ironic and (as another reviewer here pointed out) deus ex machina ending left me vaguely dissatisfied. I look forward to the author's next book and hope he leaves the O.Henry climax method behind.
Rating:
Summary: A long strange night....
Review: This debut novel is a hilarious account of the kind of Christmas eve that doesn't make you wish for a more exciting life. But you can't help but watch with fascination as poor Charlie Arglist's night gets worse and worse. In the vein of A SIMPLE PLAN, circumstances beyond the protagonist's control keep piling up, and you never know what is going to happen next. And, since Charlie is the most likeable thug in recent memory, you can't wait to see if he'll find his way out of trouble and out of town. My only complaint with this book is that the ending comes too soon. Hopefully we'll learn more of Charlie's exploits in the future.
Rating:
Summary: A great hardboiled-noir debut.
Review: Yes we are talking about the same book! This novel is fast-paced and bitterly funny. The characters are alive and joyful in thier own awfulness. No wonder it's a Penzler pick.
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