A bizarre tableau of sex and blood greets Harry Dresden when he answers the call of friend Lt. Karrin Murphy, Chicago PD, to investigate the kind of case that just demands the services of a professional wizard. What kind of case is that, you ask? To find the answer, you'll have to read Storm Front, book one of The Dresden Files and the first novel of author Jim Butcher. The series is published by Roc (the SF/fantasy imprint of New American Library, out of Penguin Putnam Inc.), though Butcher got feedback on his Dresden stories from other aspiring writers at the original Del Rey Online Workshop (Del Rey is one of the SF/fantasy imprints of Random House). He's one the success stories there - he got published. And, as any writer knows, getting published means opening up whole new vistas of criticism. Time to take a crack at Storm Front.

The Story

Harry Dresden has standards. He doesn't cheat his customers with big flashy shows of magic for no result and a hefty fee like some people. But having standards can make it awful hard to pay the rent some months. So it seems like the skies have opened and the heavens are pouring down when he picks up not one, but two cases in one day.

Case One: Monica Sells has a missing husband who may or may not be dabbling in magic. She's willing to pony up the dough on day one, always a plus, in the hopes that Harry can find him. She's also a bit skittish, but that's understandable - no one wants to look a wizard in the eye, and being the only professional wizard in the Chicagoland area, Harry's accustomed to the sidelong glances and the nervous tics.

Case Two: Lieutenant Karrin Murphy is a homicide detective for the Chicago PD. She and her partner are the Scully and Mulder on the force ... except, well, that they're more like an early-season friendly but skeptical Scully and the eighth-season, hard-nosed John "If I ain't seeing it, it don't exist, ah reckon" Doggett. Point being, if there's something not quite square about a case, it gets tossed their way. And two corpses mid-coitus with their chests burst open - outward, mind you - certainly qualifies. It also makes for high cleaning costs.

The coffin-jockeys are one Tommy Tomm and one Jennifer Stanton: the former was a bodyguard for Johnny Marcone, the heavyweight in Chicago's Mafia (What, Mafia? In Chicago? Nah, couldn't be.) and the latter was a high-priced call girl for the Velvet Room, which just happens to be owned and operated by the lovely - and vampish - Bianca. Vampish in the sense of being, you know, a vampire.

Additionally, Harry has a few problems of his own outside the investigation. Seems he's in trouble with the White Council (the governing body for wizards, as if you couldn't tell by the name) thanks to a minor incident that resulted in his being put on probation, complete with a guardian/observer who is, at any moment, ready to bring down the Doom of Damocles. And like any dick worth his salt, Harry has a tabloid reporter dogging his heels. Susan Rodriguez is exactly the type of dame you'd expect: pushy, sexy, nosy, interested in Harry, pushy ... did I say that already?

Commentary

Jim Butcher has a smooth writing style: clear and direct with nothing extraneous. Readers won't find flowery language in Storm Front, because Harry Dresden isn't a flowery language kind of guy. In fact, aside from that whole wizarding gig, he's the typical chauvinistic, tough-as-leather outside, soft-as-a-creampuff inside, loyal, determined, sometimes down on his luck private eye. He's a practical, matter-of-fact, straight-talking, shoot from the hip ... feel free to add more cliches to the list in the comments section, since the author didn't restrain himself in the novel. And that's where the book falls flat.

Storm Front walks a fine line between being an earnest mystery and wizard-and-faery fantasy and being a parody thereof. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. Often I laughed at things that the author might have intended seriously - with Harry's sardonic narrative, it can be hard to tell. The story works best when it's turning things just a bit askew. For instance, Harry wears a robe when he's working in his lab. A-ha, says the savvy fantasy reader: total cliche, wizards wearing robes. Whatever. Only Harry's not wearing a robe to look impressive - he's wearing one because it's darned cold in the basement. Chuckle.

While I wasn't guffawing outright at most of the one-liners or the bad luck that seems to plague Harry, I did find them pleasantly amusing - and a necessary diversion from the flat characters. Harry isn't so bad (after all, he is narrating the story, and I did find it interesting enough to read the whole thing), but the rest aren't even heavy enough to be called cardstock. Tissue paper, maybe. Every character can be identified by function in the story (which streamlines it, I suppose, since the author isn't meandering through the personal lives of each secondary character, but then I like it when authors meander a bit - you'll have to make up your own mind on that one). Karrin Murphy functions as the lead police investigator and the closest thing Dresden has to a friend. Johnny Marcone is the tough-talking gangster. Susan Rodriguez is the slinky reporter looking for some action. And yes, I did mean that both ways. The book isn't lacking in double entendres; here's Harry confronting a photographer:

Harry: "They were having sex."

Photo Guy: "No. They was playing canasta. Yeah, sex. The real thing, not fake stuff on a set. The real thing don't look as good.... I shot my roll and got out."

I grinned, but he didn't seem to have noticed the double entendre. You just don't get quality lowlife often enough anymore.

The investigation starts off slow, but there are enough action scenes to please short attention spans. They're a bit odd sometimes - at points I was reminded of Batman and of Mickey Mouse (in his role as the sorcerer's apprentice) - but they aren't lacking in blood. Or nudity. Most of the tension, though, is deflected by the comedy, so even at moments when it seemed like Bad Things might happen to Harry, I was laughing instead of frantically turning pages.

Have you ever been approached by a grim-looking man, carrying a naked sword with a blade about ten miles long in his hand, in the middle of the night, beneath the stars on the shores of Lake Michigan? If you have, seek professional help. If you have not, then believe you me, it can scare the bejeezus out of you.

And then there's the ending, in which everything's wrapped up with a bow once the murderer has been confronted. All those little side not-quite-plots are resolved in a couple paragraphs and the file is closed on book one of The Dresden Files. Overall the book does a decent job of mixing fantasy with mystery. The narrative voice is fun when it's campy, and flat when it's trying to evoke sympathy or fear. The characters are just there, and it's hard to really care about such ciphers, but then it's not really necessary that you care about any of them except Harry.

Admittedly, I didn't race through this book like I do many; I put it down frequently and went off to do more important things, like make more ice cubes and turn up the fan (heatwave 2001 had descended on Boston, making the ambient temperature around 104F and leaving me to dream of air conditioning). But I'm biased in favor of character over plot. As a fun read that requires neither thought nor emotional commitment, Storm Front works. And the mystery ... well, you'll have to see how it all ties together. I had some guesses, but I still didn't have it all figured out before the revelation.

Book two of The Dresden Files is titled Fool Moon; hopefully the series gets better and not worse.

Paperback, 322 pages
ISBN: 0-451-45781-1
List Price: $6.99


Recommended: Yes