Storm Front: 08/19/13

Storm Front is by Jim Butcher is the first of the Dresden Files books. Harry Dresden is a (and perhaps the only) professional wizard working in the Chicago area. He also sometimes tags along as a consultant on police cases.

As the bills are piling up, Dresden takes a less than promising case. A woman wants help finding her husband except she won't give up his name or their address. This smacks of the Maltese Falcon, but with magic involved.

Then to complicate matters, Dresden is pulled onto a grisly murder investigation. Clearly from the destruction to these bodies, magic has been used. Anyone who knows their mystery genre (and that's really what this is, despite the urban fantasy elements) will know these two cases have to be linked.

The figuring out how, as well as the magical danger that the investigations entail, is what makes Storm Front a fun read. I happened to listen to the audio, read by James Marsters. He gives Dresden the right level of disinterest, making the magic he lives and works with, an ordinary and oft-times boring part of the landscape.

Four stars

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