Storm Front is the first of The Dresden Files, a continuing series about the adventures of one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, the only wizard in the Chicago Yellow Pages. The significant thing is that Harry is no stage magician, he is in fact the real thing. Instead of using his powers for personal enrichment, however, he uses them to help people in need at his private detective agency, which, as you might expect, does so poorly that he has trouble making the rent. If this sounds cliched, well, it is, and yet Harry has a genuinely likeable quality which keeps the reader from becoming indifferent to his fate.

The case around which Storm Front revolves is that of a missing husband. However, a magical double murder case into which Harry is drawn by the local police also requires his attention, and it is not giving anything crucial to say that the two, of course, turn out to be intimately linked. The magical elements are incorporated seamlessly into the plot, although the author's constant insistence that magic and wizardry are good and stem from natural elements within the earth not only grows tiresome, but actually interferes somewhat with the plot. However, the attentive reader will soon note the author is not troubled overmuch by inconsistencies, so this is pretty much par for the course.

I was not impressed with Storm Front, but I enjoyed it and so will any fantasy reader who doesn't expect too much from a fun little magic detective novel.

Style: The story is written in a manner that suggests the author is somewhat familiar with the hard-boiled style of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, unfortunately, he is not so familiar with it that he is able to wield it with any real dexterity. This is a first novel and it has all the clumsiness of a first novel; emotions tend to swing from one extreme to the other with very little in between, the protagonist's motivations for even the slightest action must be explained and the thugs are, for the most part, ludicrously thuggish. If this were a painting, the brushstrokes would be showing to the point that they interfere somewhat with the enjoyment of the image itself. There are also numerous minor inconsistencies in the descriptions, even within a single scene, indicating an amount of carelessness on the writer's part.

Story: This is the saving grace of Storm Front. For all of its flaws, it is an entertaining little tale and one does find oneself genuinely interested in Harry's fate as well as how the story plays out. The plot is not overly convoluted, the pieces all fall into place nicely and very few, if any, loose ends are left unresolved. Once one accepts that Harry is, at heart, a text-drawn comix hero, one can simply relax and enjoy following the mystery's skein to its end.

Characters: The characters are thin and cartoonish, although there is real hope for the future as the author does go to some trouble to try to flesh them out by explaining their motivations. That he is unsuccessful in doing so is more due to a lack of imagination than a lack of trying. The usual canards are present; a parade of hot women unaccountably come on to the clueless, kind-hearted hero, the hero agonizes over using violence against someone who has not only killed several people but is actively trying to kill him, the bad guys are still the mafia and so forth.

Some of the difficulties stem from the protagonist, who is simply an unbelievable contradiction in that he has real power, and yet only seems to use it when it is necessary to advance the plot. Plot-driven behavior is a frequent issue, one egregious example is when the woman who is portrayed as the protagonist's closest friend completely turns on him simply because he won't tell her information that she strongly suspects he has.

Creativity: Considering that Black Gate actually calls "private investigators in a world of elves and fairies" an overused plot device in its submission guidelines, Storm Front can hardly be viewed as being wildly original. Vampires are vampires, Wizards have a White Council and the Four Laws of Robotics... that is to say, Magic, and the private detective is having a hard time making ends meet.

Text Sample: She leaned toward me, enough that a glance down would have afforded an interesting angle to the V of her white shirt. "I'd love to hear you tell me about this one, Harry." She quirked a smile at me that promised things.

I almost smiled back at her. "Sorry," I told her. "I have a standard nondisclosure agreement with the city."

"Something off the record, then?" she asked. "Rumor has it that those killings were pretty sensational."

"Can't help you, Susan," I told her. "Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me, et cetera."

"Just a hint," she pressed. "A word of comment. Something shared between two people who are very attracted to one another."

"Which two people would that be?"

She put an elbow on the counter and propped her chin in her hand, studying me through narrowed eyes and thick, long lashes. One of the things that appealed to me about her was even though she used her charm and femininity relentlessly in pursuit of her stories, she had no concept of just how attractive she really was - I had seen that when I looked within her last year. "Harry Dresden," she said. "You are a thoroughly maddening man." Her eyes narrowed a bit further. "You didn't look down my blouse even once, did you," she accused.

I took a sip of my ale and beckoned Mac to pour her one as well. He did. "Guilty."

"Most men are off-balance by now," she complained. "What does it take with you, anyway, Dresden?"

"I am pure of heart and mind," I told her. "I cannot be corrupted."

She stared back at me in frustration for a moment. Then she tilted her head back to laugh. She had a good laugh, too, throaty and rich. I did look down at her chest when she did that, just for a second.