My Cultural Diet

After hearing several friends rave about Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, I finally checked out the first installment — and I see why now. Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only advertising wizard, a sort of magical private investigator who folks turn to when they need help with the supernatural (or at least think they do). However, Dresden is reluctant to rely on spellcraft to solve cases due to the dangerous nature of magic as well as certain aspects of his own past. Instead, he relies on intuition and quick-thinking, but those will only get him so far when people begin dying in spectacularly gruesome fashion, a new drug hits the streets, and a woman seeks Dresden’s help in finding her missing husband. It’s basically a blend of hard-boiled detective fiction (e.g., Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett) and wizard councils, vampires, and fairies — and it works pretty well. I read Storm Front in just two days, such is Butcher’s way with words. That said, I’m not sure how much further I’ll delve into the series. Though I enjoyed Dresden’s debut, I can see subsequent installments becoming increasingly formulaic.

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