Travel back to 1938 for a story of politics, crime and passion set in Los Angeles

Ice Pick is a serious novel with compelling characters who presage the social conflicts that will roil America for decades to come. Set just prior to World War II, it is steeped in ideological turmoil, institutionalized racism, technological change and the factional battle for the future identity of a great nation. (Read more…)

REVIEWS

“Donnie Dale is a prose magician in his gritty novel Ice Pick. He seamlessly conjures the hard-bitten world of labor activists, brutal gangsters, and entrenched racism and bigotry in 1930s LA, caught in the grips of the Depression.

Dale brings two masterfully wrought characters into unlikely union, first through raw lust and then deepening affection and devotion. Wanda Kitchen is a young educated Jewish woman and an intrepid organizer for the Ladies’ Garment Union, while Donovan Daley is the Ice Man, a castaway from a failed family farm in Dust Bowl Oklahoma. Donovan possesses demonic strength, a volatile temper, and a noble savage’s sense of justice. Through a synergy of opposites, Wanda and Donovan combine forces against corruption in this violent, thrilling, and yet, at times, tender novel.”
—Jeffrey Greene, author of Water From Stone and Beautiful Monsters.

“Donnie Dale’s Ice Pick is hardboiled L.A. noir, to be sure. It’s often violent and unflinching. (You’ll never see a pair of pliers the same way again.) But it’s a novel with a big heart and a good head as the love story of Donovan and Wanda unfolds to a blending of action and ideology that forever changes both characters, and the reader, as well.”
—Thomas Cobb, author of Crazy Heart and Blood in Their Eyes