Audiobook: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Storm Front 
Author: Jim Butcher
Narrator: James Marsters
Publication: Buzzy Multimedia (Dec. 28, 2008)
Length: 8 hours and 1 minute

Description: My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I'm a wizard. I work out of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I'm the only openly practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages, under Wizards. Believe it or not, I'm the only one there.

With rent past due and a decent meal becoming an issue of some importance, Harry needs work, and soon. A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires, while he himself is under suspicion of the crimes.

My Thoughts: This book introduces Chicago's only wizard who happens to be in the Yellow Pages - Harry Dresden. He's down on his luck and scrambling for rent money and food money. He is also in the black books of the White Council who have a wizard following him to make sure he doesn't  do any black magic.

When his friend in the Chicago Police Department - Lt. Karrin Murphy - calls him to a crime scene, he discovers that there must be another wizard in town based on the way the two people died. Looking into the crime will bring a much needed paycheck but it will also put him in danger from the White Council if he does what Karrin wants and figures out what spell was used to kill the two.

Then Harry gets another case. Monica comes to him asking him to look for her missing husband. It's not his usual kind of case but he needs the money.  Somehow the missing person and the mysterious deaths are tied together and the crime boss who runs Chicago is also involved somehow as is a new street drug.

Harry is a determined investigator who runs afoul of a number of bad actors in this story. He is attacked by a giant scorpion, bludgeoned by someone who wants a lock of his hair, and is shot a couple of times. But Harry doesn't give up until he solves his two cases and clears his name with the White Council.

The story is narrated by James Marsters. Once I got used to the various sniffs and sighs and audible breathing, I enjoyed his interpretation of Chicago's public wizard.

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.