Storm Front

Butcher described his Dresden Files as Dirty Harry Potter, meaning that it combines noir detective fiction and police procedurals (like Dirty Harry, not "dirty" in the vulgar sense) with the genre of contemporary magic and fantasy. The narrative voice provided by Harry Dresden reflects heavily that noir influence: wry, frequenly cynical, humorus, and self-effacing in places. Harry is a sympathetic down-on-his-luck gumshoe who also happens to be a wizard with a checkered past. He is Chicago's only openly practicing wizard, in fact. In this debut of the series, he really has his hands full as he is called on a missing person's case involving some potentially nasty magic, and then called as a consultant to help the police solve a murder that involved some really nasty magic, a murder for which a Warden of the White Council of Wizards believes Harry to be guilty of. Butcher piles on the crises for Harry, so the novel keeps moving and never seems to lull. The action is very well described, cinematic even in how clearly realized and well executed it is. The magic is pretty neat as well, as it is given some basic framework and rules but is nevertheless impressive and interesting. The characters, particularly Harry, are very believable and well-crafted. Indeed, at the moment I am writing this review I have finished 5 books in the series, and Harry's characterization has been immensely enjoyable both in terms of the overall story arc across books and how Butcher handles him in each volume individually. I'll admit, I was extremely skeptical about this series when I saw the trenchcoat wearing protagonist on the cover. I thought it would be a derivative piece of garbage, but after I saw The Dresden Files on Netflix (and loved it) I knew I had to get my Dresden fix by jumping into the books. Each book so far has been well-paced, exciting in all the right places, interesting, and flat out fun. I highly recommend this series, paticularly the audiobooks narrated by James Marsters (of Buffy fame) available from Audible.com