For years, my friend has told me that I need to check out the Dresden Files and I’ve put it off. I’m very cautious about a lot of supernatural fantasy books, because I’ve found so few done well. But after getting into Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter books, I decided that I really should check out Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. So I cautiously started reading Storm Front and truly enjoyed it. It’s a good fun book with the core of a mystery novel in a supernatural fantasy setting. Let’s check it out.

Harry Dresden is a wizard, but that doesn’t really pay the bills, so he runs a private detective agency. It’s not very successful, so he’s not really in a place to turn down a missing person’s case, especially when the woman hiring him leaves him a big enough retainer to get caught up on rent. He also takes some consulting cases for the police and gets brought into a fun case where two people were blown up from the inside. Harry also has, for the lack of a better term, a parole officer, Warden Morgan. You see Harry had a bit of a past where he killed his mentor. There was a good reason for it, but the White Council placed Harry on probation. One bad magical act and the White Council will execute Harry.

So Harry tries to contact the missing person client and she denies everything. Harry slowly realizes that his cases might be linked and that he might be in a lot more trouble than he thought. He might need to take on a very powerful, though untrained, dark wizard and Warden Morgan thinks that Harry is the cause of the trouble, so he has a meeting with the White Council to decide his future, assuming he survives.

Since this is only the first book in the series, you can guess how it ends. Overall, it’s a fun, quick read that introduces us to the main character Harry Dresden. Harry is really the only character who is fully formed and well-rounded. The missing persons case is straight out of a noir mystery as it the tough, but fair police officer. The book doesn’t break any new ground, but it is fun enough that I’m interested in reading future books in the series.