Storm Front

The Dresden Files begin with a simple, sturdy idea: a wizard in present-day Chicago who lists himself in the phone book and takes the cases the police cannot explain. As a blend of detective story and magic it moves briskly and has some inventive scenes. Whether you continue depends largely on Harry Dresden himself; some readers find him hard to like, and with so many volumes ahead, that matters.

Worth knowing Storm Front, from 2000, was Jim Butcher’s first published novel and the first of the Dresden Files, which by Battle Ground in 2020 had reached seventeen books. Harry Dresden is the only wizard in the Chicago phone book, broke, consulted by the police’s Special Investigations unit under Karrin Murphy when a case is plainly not normal, and here the case is a couple whose hearts have burst out of their chests in bed, which means a wizard did it and the White Council will suspect Harry. The book sets up the furniture, Bob the talking skull, the vampire Bianca, the gangster Marcone, the Council, and the series gets much better from about the third volume. Private-eye voice, one case per book.

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