This is the first volume in a recent series that has a bit of an unusual premise. Harry Dresden, the 'anti-hero' of the book is a detective who is also a licensed wizard. Unlike Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy, however, Harry is more of a gumshoe than an aesthete. He's like a combination of Phillip Marlowe and Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. Think of him as a magic wand with an attitude. A thirty pound cat with half a tail and an oversexed skull in his basement don't help his image either. He makes a thin living finding the lost and helping the police, despite being the only wizard listed in the Chicago Yellow Pages.
Dresden, broke as usual, answers a police call for assistance, and discovers a gruesome double murder. The two victims, caught in flagrante delicto, have had their hearts blown out through their rib cages. Detective Karrin Murphy wants answers fast, but Crime boss Johnny Marcone wants Dresden out of the case. Dresden's other case is searching for a missing husband who seems to have had an unhealthy interest in magic. And the last complication is the White Council, who think that Harry Dresden just might be dipping a little to far into the black magic side, and intend to flatten him if there is any further hint of magic abuse.
Harry is a bit of a luckless sort. In attempting to question the vampire hostess of an upscale house of ill repute he makes a serious enemy of what could best be described as an old bat. One of his information sources then turns up dead the same way as the first couple. A demon nearly turns him and his date into pudding and a giant scorpion attempts to take out Detective Murphy and Dresden with one swipe of a very deadly tail. And, without fail, Harry is pestered at every step by an obnoxious representative of the White Council.
Unfortunately, as either wizard of gumshoe, Harry is a bit hapless. He knows his stuff, but he is forever forgetting his gun, dropping his staff and getting ambushed by bad guys. As a result he is always coming from behind, which is a bad place to be when you are chasing the black wizard who is saturating the city in a dangerous new drug that not only gets you high, but opens your third eye as well. Harry is more of the rush right in where angels fear to tread type than he is the careful planner. It doesn't help that he has a bit of a hero complex as well.
Ok, the magic is a bit hokey and the language is slightly overblown. Other than Harry the characters are right out of a cheat book. Even Harry is a bit hackneyed. But the plot is original and well laid out. Narrative skills come with maturity, and Jim Butcher is still a novice storyteller. In a wave of tedious, repetitive genre tales, "Storm Front" stands out as something worth a second look. It will be a while though before I forgive him for the following tidbit. "...he picked me up to hurl me toward the demon. I objected with fragile tenacity."
