The Ice Harvest
For all that it involves organized crime, naked women, grumpy bouncers,  a serious snowstorm, and a hero with a profound drinking pattern,The Ice  Harvestis 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 isWaiting for  Godotrather thanGoodfellas. 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 fromFargo.--Kelly Flynn