Onward with my Christmas “mysteries.”  The Ice Harvest was a freebie with my Premium membership at Audible.   It’s not a new book but, even as noir as it is, it got some excellent reviews back in 2000 and it’s still in print.  Some more recent listeners weren’t too happy, but I thought I’d take a chance – it’s short anyway and I liked what I heard in the sample – besides, Grover Gardner (a favorite) reads it. 

The Ice Harvest
by Scott Philips 
2000 / 4h 30m 
Read by Grover Gardner 
Rating:  A- /  noir crime

In the late afternoon on Christmas Eve, Charlie Arglist leaves a low-end bar in a high-end company car, checking out of Dodge,  er. .. Wichita. He takes slugs from his handy bottle as needed.  He’s a lawyer, but not a terribly respectable one and he needs to tie up a few loose ends and say goodbye to some friends. He has 9 1/2 hours to kill due to an ice storm, so he heads for another dive – a stripper bar with regular fights. But Charlie has a friend there – Renata. He gets an idea …

One thing seems to lead to another and Charlie spends Christmas Eve and Day in a semi-haze chasing people down and avoiding police and doing serious damage on his good-bye spree.

This book is really written very well with an underlying comic aspect to it.