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Dead Beat | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Jim Butcher | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The Dresden Files | Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, Small Favor | ||
It's another typical day for Harry Dresden, Chicago's only publically advertised wizard. Which means he's poor but not destitute, lonely despite his half-brother - and vampric - roommate and good friend on the police force, and still healing from his last major run-in with the supernatural despite a year's passage of time. It's not quite typical, though, in that he receives a bit of blackmail. now he has to find the Word of Kemmler within three days, or one of his best friends will be ruined. But there's more to this than just an enemy out to piss Harry off. Much more. World-changing more. In a bad way, of course.
Maybe it is typical, after all.
Dead Beat is in some ways a tour de force. Something from every single previous book makes an appearance in this one. Sometimes it is merely a character, sometmes it is more integral to the plot. Sometimes it is a cameo and other times it is more important. Harry's long-running problems make some appearances as well. The vampire war, his relationship to the faerie and to certain humans, past allies and enemies, they all come back. Only a very few characters are left out. Meanwhile events in his own life are progressing, the greater story rolling on.
The Dresden Files has consisted of very action-oriented mysteries, with fights and high stakes and little time, and this is no exception. It has everything. All the while Butcher makes Harry a little deeper a character. He's still something of a wiseass, especially when confronted, but he's well past being just the cynical private eye with a want that he was in Storm Front.
At 425 pages, Dead Beat is a bit thicker than the other books in the series. But it nees the extra space to fit in all the goodies it has. I hardly minded. Heck, I hardly noticed. This is yet another Butcher novel that I was reluctant to let leave my hands. I got through it in a single sitting, and still wished it was longer.
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