The quick-paced nature of this story almost helps it hide its flaws enough to push this to 4 stars, but for me it doesn’t quite get there.

Harry Copperfield Blackstone Dresden is a wizard detective who helps the police solve paranormal investigations. This is a fairly cookie-cutter story to anyone who has read a crime novel before. What makes it interesting is the world around the mystery. It’s set in modern day America but with supernatural creatures integrated as part of our society. Throughout the investigation Dresden has to interact with some of these communities and it really feels like there’s something great to explore here but it isn’t quite realised in this book.

My main gripe is regarding how female characters are written. It reads like what an angsty 14 year old teenage boy would want his relationships with women to be like. A lot of the dialogue leaves me physically cringing. The story itself was well paced and unfolded nicely despite being fairly predictable. The relationship between Dresden and Murphy was also well crafted; it felt like two broken people trying their best to care for each other, as opposed to the other relationships that felt like a woman inexplicably trying to sleep with Dresden – who hasn’t showered for days and by his own admission looks like a mess – while he tries to gather information.

I have heard the writing gets a lot better by the third book. These books are fairly short and you can tell that Butcher’s reading has a lot to give, the shape of his stories are well moulded and I’m hopeful that the second and third book will impress me more.