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![Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2) by [Jim Butcher]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41NzZe+UZwL._SY346_.jpg)
Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2) Kindle Edition
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You’d think there’d be a little more action for the only professional wizard listed in the Chicago phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn’t been able to dredge up any kind of work: magical, mundane, or menial.
Just when it looks like he can’t afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise. There’s a brutally mutilated corpse, and monstrous animal markings at the scene. Not to mention that the killing took place on the night of a full moon. Harry knows exactly where this case is headed. Take three guesses—and the first two don’t count...
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRoc
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2001
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size1700 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Philip Marlowe.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Fans of Laurell K. Hamilton and Tanya Huff will love this series.”—Midwest Book Review
“Superlative.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“One of the most enjoyable marriages of the fantasy and mystery genres on the shelves.”—Cinescape
“Butcher...spins an excellent noirish detective yarn in a well-crafted, supernaturally-charged setting. The supporting cast is again fantastic, and Harry’s wit continues to fly in the face of a peril-fraught plot.”—Booklist (starred review)
“What’s not to like about this series?...It takes the best elements of urban fantasy, mixes it with some good old-fashioned noir mystery, tosses in a dash of romance and a lot of high-octane action, shakes, stirs, and serves.”—SF Site
“A tricky plot complete with against-the-clock pacing, firefights, explosions, and plenty of magic. Longtime series fans as well as newcomers drawn by the SciFi Channel’s TV series based on the novels should find this supernatural mystery a real winner.”—Library Journal
“What would you get if you crossed Spenser with Merlin? Probably you would come up with someone very like Harry Dresden, wizard, tough guy and star of [the Dresden Files].”—The Washington Times
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thrity-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
ALSO BY JIM BUTCHER
THE DRESDEN FILES
STORM FRONT
GRAVE PERIL
SUMMER KNIGHT
DEATH MASKS
BLOOD RITES
DEAD BEAT
PROVEN GUILTY
WHITE NIGHT
SMALL FAVOR
THE CODEX ALERA
FURIES OF CALDERON
ACADEM’S FURY
CURSOR’S FURY
CAPTAIN’S FURY
ROC
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Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Roc mass market edition.
Copyright © Jim Butcher, 2001
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon. So I didn’t know that it was one night shy of being full when a young woman sat down across from me in McAnally’s pub and asked me to tell her all about something that could get her killed.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.” I folded the piece of paper, with its drawings of three concentric rings of spidery symbols, and slid it back over the polished oak-wood table.
Kim Delaney frowned at me, and brushed some of her dark, shining hair back from her forehead. She was a tall woman, buxom and lovely in an old-world way, with pale, pretty skin and round cheeks well used to smiling. She wasn’t smiling now.
“Oh, come on, Harry,” she told me. “You’re Chicago’s only practicing professional wizard, and you’re the only one who can help me.” She leaned across the table toward me, her eyes intent. “I can’t find the references for all of these symbols. No one in local circles recognizes them either. You’re the only real wizard I’ve ever even heard of, much less know. I just want to know what these others are.”
“No,” I told her. “You don’t want to know. You’re better off forgetting this circle and concentrating on something else.”
“But—”
Mac caught my attention from behind the bar by waving a hand at me, and slid a couple of plates of steaming food onto the polished surface of the crooked oak bar. He added a couple of bottles of his homemade brown ale, and my mouth started watering.
My stomach made an unhappy noise. It was almost as empty as my wallet. I would never have been able to afford dinner tonight, except that Kim had offered to buy, if I’d talk to her about something during the meal. A steak dinner was less than my usual rate, but she was pleasant company, and a sometime apprentice of mine. I knew she didn’t have much money, and I had even less.
Despite my rumbling stomach, I didn’t rise immediately to pick up the food. (In McAnally’s pub and grill, there aren’t any service people. According to Mac, if you can’t get up and walk over to pick up your own order, you don’t need to be there at all.) I looked around the room for a moment, with its annoying combination of low ceilings and lazily spinning fans, its thirteen carved wooden columns and its thirteen windows, plus thirteen tables arranged haphazardly to defray and scatter the residual magical effects that sometimes surrounded hungry (in other words, angry) wizards. McAnally’s was a haven in a town where no one believed in magic. A lot of the crowd ate there.
“Look, Harry,” Kim said. “I’m not using this for anything serious, I promise. I’m not trying any summoning or binding. It’s an academic interest only. Something that’s been bothering me for a while.” She leaned forward and put her hand over mine, looking me in the face without looking me in the eyes, a trick that few nonpractitioners of the Art could master. She grinned and showed me the deep dimples in her cheeks.
My stomach growled again, and I glanced over at the food on the bar, waiting for me. “You’re sure?” I asked her. “This is just you trying to scratch an itch? You’re not using it for anything?”
“Cross my heart,” she said, doing so.
I frowned. “I don’t know . . .”
She laughed at me. “Oh, come on, Harry. It’s no big deal. Look, if you don’t want to tell me, never mind. I’ll buy you dinner anyway. I know you’re tight for money lately. Since that thing last spring, I mean.”
I glowered, but not at Kim. It wasn’t her fault that my main employer, Karrin Murphy, the director of Special Investigations at the Chicago Police Department, hadn’t called me in for consulting work in more than a month. Most of my living for the past few years had come from serving as a special consultant to SI, but after a fracas last spring involving a dark wizard fighting a gang war for control of Chicago’s drug trade, work with SI had slowly tapered off—and with it, my income.
I didn’t know why Murphy hadn’t been calling me in as often. I had my suspicions, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to confront her about them yet. Maybe it wasn’t anything I’d done. Maybe the monsters had gone on strike. Yeah, right.
The bottom line was I was strapped for cash. I’d been eating ramen noodles and soup for too many weeks. The steaks Mac had prepared smelled like heaven, even from across the room. My belly protested again, growling its neolithic craving for charred meat.
But I couldn’t just go and eat the dinner without giving Kim the information she wanted. It’s not that I’ve never welshed on a deal, but I’ve never done it with anyone human—and definitely not with someone who looked up to me.
Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.
“All right, all right,” I sighed. “Let me get the dinner and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Kim’s round cheeks dimpled again. “Thanks, Harry. This means a lot to me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I told her, and got up to weave my way toward the bar, through columns and tables and so on. McAnally’s had more people than usual tonight, and though Mac rarely smiled, there was a contentment to his manner that indicated that he was happy with the crowd. I snatched up the plates and bottles with a somewhat petulant attitude. It’s hard to take much joy in a friend’s prosperity when your own business is about to go under.
I took the food, steaks and potatoes and green beans, back to the table and sat down again, placing Kim’s plate in front of her. We ate for a while, myself in sullen silence and she in hearty hunger.
“So,” Kim said, finally. “What can you tell me about that?” She gestured toward the piece of paper with her fork.
I swallowed my food, took a sip of the rich ale, and picked up the paper again. “All right. This is a figure of High magic. Three of them, really, one inside the other, like layered walls. Remember what I told you about magical circles?”
Kim nodded. “They either hold something out or keep it in. Most work on magic energies or creatures of the Nevernever, but mortal creatures can cross the circles and break them.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s what this outermost circle of symbols is. It’s a barrier against creatures of spirit and magical forces. These symbols here, here, here, are the key ones.” I pointed out the squiggles in question.
Kim nodded eagerly. “I got the outer one. What’s the next?”
“The second circle is more of a spell barrier to mortal flesh. It wouldn’t work if all you used was a ring of symbols. You’d need something else, stones or gems or something, spaced between the drawings.” I took another bite of steak.
Kim frowned at the paper, and then at me. “And then what would that do?”
“Invisible wall,” I told her. “Like bricks. Spirits, magic, could go right through it, but mortal flesh couldn’t. Neither could a thrown rock, bullets, anything purely physical.”
“I see,” she said, excited. “Sort of a force field.”
I nodded. “Something like that.”
Her cheeks glowed with excitement, and her eyes shone. “I knew it. And what’s this last one?”
I squinted at the innermost ring of symbols, frowning. “A mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s just gobbledygook. It doesn’t mean anything useful. Are you sure you copied this correctly?”
Kim’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I’m sure, I’m sure. I was careful.”
I studied her face for a moment. “If I read the symbols correctly, it’s a third wall. Built to withhold creatures of flesh and spirit. Neither mortal nor spirit but somewhere in between.”
She frowned. “What kind of creatures are like that?”
I shrugged. “None,” I said, and officially, it was true. The White Council of wizards did not allow the discussion of demons that could be called to earth, beings of spirit that could gather flesh to themselves. Usually, a spirit-circle was enough to stop all but the most powerful demons or Elder Things of the outer reaches of the Nevernever. But this third circle was built to stop things that could transcend those kinds of boundaries. It was a cage for demonic demigods and archangels.
Kim wasn’t buying my answer. “I don’t see why anyone would make a circle like this to contain nothing, Harry.”
I shrugged. “People don’t always do reasonable, sensible things. They’re like that.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Come on, Harry. I’m not a baby. You don’t have to shelter me.”
“And you,” I told her, “don’t need to know what kind of thing that third circle was built to contain. You don’t want to know. Trust me.”
She glowered at me for a long moment, then sipped at her ale and shrugged. “All right. Circles have to be empowered, right? You have to know how to switch them on, like lights?”
“Something like that. Sure.”
“How would a person turn this one on?”
I stared at her for a long time.
“Harry?” she asked.
“You don’t need to know that, either. Not for an academic interest. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Kim, but leave it alone. Forget it. Walk away, before you get hurt.”
“Harry, I am not—”
“Save it,” I told her. “You’re sitting on a tiger cage, Kim.” I thumped a finger on the paper for emphasis. “And you wouldn’t need it if you weren’t planning on trying to stick a tiger in there.”
Her eyes glittered, and she lifted her chin. “You don’t think I’m strong enough.”
“Your strength’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “You don’t have the training. You don’t have the knowledge. I wouldn’t expect a kid in grade school to be able to sit down and figure out college calculus. And I don’t expect it of you, either.” I leaned forward. “You don’t know enough yet to be toying with this sort of thing, Kim. And even if you did, even if you did manage to become a full-fledged wizard, I’d still tell you not to do it. You mess this up and you could get a lot of people hurt.”
“If I was planning to do that, it’s my business, Harry.” Her eyes were bright with anger. “You don’t have the right to choose for me.”
“No,” I told her. “I’ve got the responsibility to help you make the right choice.” I curled the paper in my fingers and crushed it, then tossed it aside, to the floor. She stabbed her fork into a cut of steak, a sharp, vicious gesture. “Look, Kim,” I said. “Give it some time. When you’re older, when you’ve had more experience . . .”
“You aren’t so much older than me,” Kim said.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I’ve had a lot of training. And I started young.” My own ability with magic, far in excess of my years and education, wasn’t a subject I wanted to explore. So I tried to shift the direction of the conversation. “How is this fall’s fund-raiser going?”
“It’s not,” she said. She leaned back wearily in her seat. “I’m tired of trying to pry money out of people to save the planet they’re poisoning or the animals they’re killing. I’m tired of writing letters and doing marches for causes no one believes in anymore.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m just tired.”
“Look, Kim. Try to get some rest. And please, please don’t play with that circle. Promise me.”
She tossed her napkin down, left a few bills on the table, and stood up. “Enjoy your meal, Harry,” she said. “And thanks for nothing.”
I stood up as well. “Kim,” I said. “Wait a minute.”
But she ignored me. She stalked off toward the door, her skirt swaying along with her long hair. She cut an impressive, statuesque figure. I could feel the anger bubbling off her. One of the ceiling fans shuddered and let out a puff of smoke as she walked under it, then whirled down to a halt. She raced up the short flight of stairs and exited the bar, banging the door shut behind her. People watched her leave, then glanced back to me, speculation on their faces.
I sat back down, frustrated. Dammit. Kim was one of several people I had coached through the difficult period surrounding the discovery of their innate magical talents. It made me feel like crap to withhold information from her, but she had been playing with fire. I couldn’t let her do that. It was my responsibility to help protect her from such things, until she knew enough to realize how dangerous they were.
To say nothing of what the White Council would think of a nonwizard toying with major summoning circles. The White Council didn’t take chances with things like that. They just acted, decisively, and they weren’t always particular about people’s lives and safety when they did it.
I had done the right thing. Keeping that kind of information out of Kim’s hands had been the right decision. I had been protecting her from danger she didn’t, couldn’t, fully appreciate.
I had done the right thing—even if she had trusted me to provide answers for her, as I had in the past, when teaching her to contain and control her modest magical talents. Even if she had trusted me to show her the answers she needed, to be her guide through the darkness.
I’d done the right thing.
Dammit.
My stomach was soured. I didn’t want any more of Mac’s delicious meal, steak or no steak. I didn’t feel like I’d earned it.
I was sipping ale and thinking dark thoughts when the door opened again. I didn’t look up, occupied as I was with brooding, a famous pastime of wizards everywhere. And then a shadow fell over me.
“Sitting here pouting,” Murphy said. She bent over and absently picked up the wadded scrap of paper I had tossed aside earlier, tucking it tidily into her coat pocket rather than letting it lie about as clutter on the floor. “That’s not much like you, Harry.”
I glanced up at Murphy. I didn’t have far to look. Karrin Murphy wasn’t much more than five feet tall. She’d gotten her golden hair cut, from shoulder length to something far shorter, and a little longer in front than in back. It was a punky sort of look, and very appealing with her blue eyes and upturned nose. She was dressed for the weather in what must have been her at-home clothes: dark jeans, a flannel shirt, hiking boots, and a heavy woodsman’s jacket. She was wearing her badge on her belt.
Murphy was extremely cute, for a grown adult who also held a black belt in aikido, and had several marksmanship awards from Chicago PD. She was a real professional, one who had fought and clawed her way up the ranks to become full lieutenant. She’d made enemies along the way, and one of them had seen to it that she was put in charge of Special Investigations soon after.
“Hello there, Murphy,” I told her. I took a swig of ale and said, “Long time, no see.” I tried to keep my voice even, but I’m pretty sure she heard the anger in it.
“Look, Harry—”
“Did you read the editorial in the Tribune? The one criticizing you for wasting the city’s money hiring a ‘charlatan psychic named Harry Dresden’? I guess you must have, since I haven’t heard from you since it came out.”
She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have time for this.”
I ignored her. “Not that I blame you. I mean, not many of the good taxpayers of Chicago believe in magic, or wizards. Of course, not many of them have seen what you and I have. You know. When we worked together. Or when I was saving your life.”
Her eyes tightened at the edges. “I need you. We’ve got a situation.”
“You need me? We haven’t talked for more than a month, and you need me all of a sudden? I’ve got an office and a telephone and everything, Lieutenant. You don’t need to track me down here while I’m having dinner.”
“I’ll tell the killer to be sure to operate during business hours next time,” Murphy said. “But I need you to help me find him.”
I straightened in my chair, frowning. “There’s been a murder? Something in my field?”
Murphy flashed a hard smile at me. “I hope you didn’t have anything more important to do.”
I felt my jaw grow tense. “No. I’m ready.” I stood up.
"Well then,” she said, turning and walking away. “Shall we go?”
Chapter Two
Murphy declined to ride in the Blue Beetle, my old Volkswagen bug.
The Beetle wasn’t really blue, not anymore. One of the doors had been replaced with a green duplicate, the other one with white, when something with claws had shredded the originals. The hood had been slagged by fire, and my mechanic, Mike, had replaced it with the hood from a red vehicle. The important thing is that the Beetle runs, even if it doesn’t do it very fast, and I’m comfortable with the car. Mike has declared that the VW bug is the easiest car in the world to repair, and so that’s what I drive. He keeps it running eight or nine days in ten. That’s phenomenal.
Technology tends to foul up around wizards—flip on a light switch, and it’ll be the time the bulb burns out. Drive past a streetlight, and it’ll pick just then to flicker and die. Whatever can go wrong will, automobiles included.
I didn’t think it made much sense for Murphy to risk her vehicle when she could have taken mine, but she said she’d take her chances.
She didn’t speak as she drove her Saturn down the JFK, out toward Rosemont. I watched her, uncomfortable, as we went. She was in a hurry, taking a few too many chances cutting in and out of traffic, and I put on my seat belt. At least we weren’t on her motorcycle.
“Murph,” I asked her, “where’s the fire?”
She glanced aside at me. “I want you out there before some other people show up.”
“Press?” I couldn’t quite keep a nasty slur out of the word.
She shrugged. “Whoever.”
I frowned at her, but she didn’t say anything else—which seemed typical. Murphy didn’t speak much to me anymore. We rode the rest of the way in silence, exited the JFK, and pulled into the parking lot of a half-completed little strip mall. We got out of the car.
A jet came in, low, heading for O’Hare International Airport, only a few miles to the west. I squinted at it for a moment, and then frowned at Murphy as a uniformed officer led us toward a building surrounded by police tape. There was an abundance of light, the moon overhead bright silver and almost a completely round circle. I cast an enormous, gangly shadow as I walked, my duster flapping around my legs. It towered beside Murphy’s far smaller shadow ahead of me.
“Murphy?” I said. “Aren’t we outside Chicago city limits?”
“Yeah,” Murphy said shortly.
“Uh. Then aren’t we out of your jurisdiction, technically?”
“People need help wherever they can get it, Dresden. And the last several killings happened in Chicago, so we want to look at this firsthand. I already worked things out with the local force. It’s not really an issue.”
“Several killings?” I said. “Several? As in more than one? Murphy, slow down.”
But she didn’t. Instead, she led me into a roomy building that proved to be under construction, though all the exterior work was finished. Some of the windows were still covered with board. I didn’t see the sign on the building’s front doors until I got close.
“The Varsity?” I said, reading it. “I thought Marcone burned it down last spring.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Murphy said, glancing at me over her shoulder. “Relocated and rebuilding.”
Chicago’s resident crime lord, Gentleman Johnny Marcone, was the robber baron of the mean streets. He kept all the rough business inside the city proper, leaving his legitimate interests out in the suburbs, like here in Rosemont. Last spring, when I had confronted him in his club, a previous incarnation of the Varsity, about a deadly new drug on the streets, the place had wound up burning to the ground.
After the whole mess was over, word got out that the drug dealer I’d taken out had been Marcone’s enemy, and that I had nuked him at the crime lord’s request. I hadn’t refuted the rumor. It was easier to let people talk than to force Marcone to make an issue of things.
Inside the building, the floors were rough, unfinished. Someone had turned on a couple of halogen work lights, and they cast the interior into brilliant, clear white light. There was drywall dust everywhere. There were a few card tables set up, with workmen’s tools left out on them in places. Plastic buckets of paint, tarps, and a sack of new paintbrushes waited for use off to one side. I didn’t notice the blood until Murphy put her arm out in front of me to keep me from walking into it.
“Wake up, Dresden,” she said. Her voice was grim.
I stopped, and looked down. Blood. A lot of blood. It began near my feet, where a long splatter had reached out like an arm from a drowning man, staining the dusty floor with scarlet. My eyes followed the path of the long bloodstain back to a pool, maybe an eighth of an inch deep, surrounding a mound of ripped cloth and torn meat that must have been the corpse.
My stomach quailed, threatening to eject the bites of steak I’d taken earlier that evening, but I forced it down. I walked in a circle around the body, keeping my distance. The corpse was, I guessed, that of a male in his thirties. He had been a large man, with a short, spiky haircut. He had fallen onto his side, facing away from me, his arms curled up toward his head, his legs up toward his vitals. A weapon, a little automatic pistol, lay seven or eight feet away, uselessly out of the victim’s reach.
I walked around the corpse until I could see the face.
Whatever had killed him, it hadn’t been human. His face was gone, simply torn away. Something had ripped his lips off. I could see his bloodstained teeth. His nose had been torn all the way up one side, and part of it dangled toward the floor. His head was misshapen, as though some enormous pressure had been put upon his temples, warping his skull in.
His eyes were gone. Torn out of his head. Bitten out. There were the ragged slash marks of fangs all around the edges of the sockets.
I closed my eyes, tightly. I took a deep breath. Another. A third. That didn’t help. The body stank, a sickly sewer-smell that rose up from the torn innards. My stomach wanted to roll up my throat, out my mouth, and onto the floor.
I could remember the other details, even with my eyes closed, and catalogued them neatly for later reference. The victim’s jacket and shirt had been torn to bloody ribbons along his forearms, in defensive wounds. His hands and arms were a mass of pulped, ripped meat, the palms and fingers slashed to ragged lumps. The curl of his body hid his abdomen from me, but that was where the blood was pooling from, spreading out like ink from a spilled bottle. The stench only confirmed that he had been eviscerated.
I turned away from the corpse and opened my eyes, staring down at the floor.
“Harry?” Murphy said, from the far side of the body. The note of hardness that had been in her voice all evening was absent. She hadn’t moved while I had done my cursory examination.
“I recognize him,” I said. “At least, I think I do. You’ll need to check dental records or something, to be sure.”
I could hear her frown in her words. “Yeah? Who was he?”
“I don’t know his name. I always called him Spike. For the haircut. He was one of Johnny Marcone’s bodyguards.”
Murphy was quiet for a moment, then said, succinctly, “Shit.”
“What, Murph?” I looked back at her, without looking down at Spike’s mangled remains.
Murphy’s face was set in concern, for me, her blue eyes gentle. I saw her wipe the expression away, as quickly as a shadow crosses the floor, a smoothing of lines that left her features neutral. I guess she hadn’t expected me to turn to her. “Take a look around a little more,” she said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“What am I looking for?” I asked her.
“You’ll know it,” she said. Then added, in a whisper that I think she didn’t intend me to hear, “I hope.”
I turned back to my work, and looked around the room. Off to one side, one of the windows was broken. Near it was a table, lying askew on the floor, its legs warped and bent. I walked over to it.
Broken glass littered the ground around the collapsed table. Since the glass was on the inside of the building, something must have come in through the window. There was blood on several of the broken pieces of glass. I picked up one of the larger ones and frowned at it. The blood was dark red, and not yet wholly dried. I took a white handkerchief from my pocket, folded the shard of glass into it, and then slipped it into the pocket of my duster.
I rose and paced over the floor, my eyes downcast, studying the dust. In one spot, it was rubbed almost clean off the floor, as though a struggle had taken place there without blood being spilled. In another spot, where the halogen lamps didn’t quite reach, there was a pool of silver moonlight below a window. I knelt down beside it.
In the center of the pool was a paw print, in the dust, a paw print almost as big as my spread hand. Canine. Dots at the tips of the paw spoke of heavy nails, almost claws.
I looked up through the window at the rounded silver shape of the almost-full moon.
“Oh, hell,” I breathed. “Oh, hell.”
Murphy came toward me and watched me silently for a moment, waiting. I licked my lips, stood up, and turned to her. “You’ve got problems.”
“No kidding. Talk to me, Dresden.”
I nodded, then pointed at the window. “The attacker probably came in there. He went after the victim, attacked him, got the gun away from him, and killed him. It’s the attacker’s blood on the window. They struggled a while, over there by that clean spot, maybe, and Spike made a break for the door. He didn’t make it there. He got torn to pieces first.”
I turned toward Murphy, looking down at her solemnly. “You’ve had other murders happen in the same way. Probably about four weeks ago, when the moon was last full. Those were the other killings you were talking about.”
Murphy glanced at my face for a moment, keeping her eyes off mine, and nodded her head. “Yeah. Four weeks ago, almost exactly. But no one else picked up the full moon angle. Just me.”
“Uh-huh. Then you should see this, too,” I said. I led her over to the window and showed her the paw print in the dust beneath it. She regarded it in silence.
“Harry,” she said after a minute. “Are there such things as werewolves?” She brushed a strand of hair back from her cheek, a small and oddly vulnerable gesture. She folded her arms over her stomach, as though she were cold.
I nodded. “Yeah. Not like you see in the movies, but yeah. I figure that’s what you got going here.”
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Product details
- ASIN : B001BPYD2O
- Publisher : Roc (January 1, 2001)
- Publication date : January 1, 2001
- Language : English
- File size : 1700 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 432 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,508 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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About the author

Jim Butcher is a bestselling author and martial arts enthusiast. His resume includes a long list of skills rendered obsolete at least 200 years ago, and he turned to writing because anything else probably would have driven him insane. He lives with his family in Independence, Missouri.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2019
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I think the sexism is toned down from the previous volume -- a little, at least. There wasn't such a fixation on cheerleaders this time around, for one thing, as there was in "Storm Front."
What I think is best about this book is the gradual expansion of the Dresden universe. We met a vampire in the last book, now we're meeting some werewolves. I like that one element is added at a time -- we get to know a "species" or type of paranormal entity, including a few people who are members of that "species," if you will, and some of the details of behavior and characteristics associated with the group. Vampires and werewolves and fairies and others are not all thrown at us at once. That being said, there is definitely some infodumping here, particularly when it comes to Dresden first getting information on werewolves. Ah, well, at least all of the information that is dumped is important to the story later on (can't say that for every instance of infodumping I've read in fantasy novels).
Once again, the book has a great pace and the climax of the action is carried out quite well. Dresden again has a bit of a hero complex (and does at least one thing that could prove dangerous to his mental well-being in order to help his comrades), but at least he's willing to accept help from non-wizards when he needs it. Once again he's not all-powerful, and sometimes he makes decisions that don't always end up having the consequences he expected them to have. Sometimes, he thinks he's protecting people by withholding information, and that turns out not to be the case. He then has to deal with the guilt that stems from his decisions. I don't quite feel like we're truly in his head, yet, because he's still tight-lipped about his past. But we're getting there.
I didn't feel there was as much of a mystery to this volume as to the previous one, perhaps because several different events got intertwined and it was difficult for me to sort out all the clues (this is purely my failing and not the author's; you could say he keeps you guessing, keeps you wanting to read further to find out more). Everything did come together in the end -- in a good way. One thing I will say about Butcher's writing is that it is easy -- and quick -- to read. It's not overly flowery or dramatic but it gets the job done. It's written in a contemporary tone that fits well with the setting (modern-day Chicago).
I'm starting to see a trend of Dresden getting close to people -- or gaining their sympathy -- and mucking it up. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out in future books. It sort of goes a long way towards explaining why he lives alone in a dark and forbidding sort of apartment, why I picture his office building as nearly deserted (though, by description in the novels, it doesn't necessarily sound that way), and so forth. However, he isn't really all that socially awkward in later volumes. I wouldn't say there's a ton of character development going on here, but have patience, because that really picks up in books 3 and 4 (and not just for Harry, but also for some of his associates).
The blood and gore is really turned up in this book, so watch out for that. It's appropriate for the subject matter, all things considered. And a particular scene I'm thinking of (don't want to spoil anything) needed to be shocking -- to dial up the intensity, the sense of urgency.
Like "Storm Front," "Fool Moon" is told from a first-person point of view (Harry's), which I think is appropriate for the genre. We, as readers, need to have the same information Harry has. It wouldn't be half as interesting or fun to know what other characters were thinking (granted, Dresden figures stuff out before I do and I have to read his explanation along with everyone else -- but it's never implausible, the clues were always there). I don't have much to add about the setting that I haven't said in the previous book; this one is also set in Chicago but is fairly light on actual geographical details. For me, anyway, it works.
Wish the character of Kim Delaney hadn't just been dropped on us at the beginning of this book. I like how what happened in her scene had later implications (in more ways than one), but I wish there'd been a proper introduction because I felt a little bit like I had missed a chapter somewhere else. Oh the other hand, I can see the utility of only talking about her here. Harry's close-mouthed about his personal life outside the events that are currently occurring, and we don't need his whole life story right now. So decisions have to be made about what to include and when, and I can at least see the reasoning behind Butcher's choice to bring Kim up here, in the way he did. I feel like some thought went into it, at least.
There are some loose ends here that I hope Butcher will come back to in a future novel. The main plot line is resolved, but we are left with a few questions. For that reason alone, I'd definitely recommend not skipping this book if you intend to read the rest of the series (some of my online acquaintances recommended starting with book 3, but I think this volume does contain some important details). It gives me hope that the main events from the first book will also tie into a grander narrative. I like the idea of an overall story arc with individual volumes that are basically self-contained stories, and that is where it looks like we are headed with this series.
Overall, I'd put this about on par with "Storm Front." I like where I think Butcher will be going with this series, but there's room for improvement (which I'm already beginning to see in books 3 and 4). 3.5 stars.
It begins with a grisly murder scene, Harry is called in by Karrin Murphy, in charge of Chicago PD Special Investigations, to help. Looking at the victim Harry concludes: “Whatever had killed him, it hadn’t been human.”
In the centre of the bloody dust is a canine paw print. This book is full of werewolves, loup garous and various theriomorphs. There is a lot of action, the plot is rather convoluted. Harry gets frequently battered but never quite broken, he struggles through one incredibly painful, hopeless situation to the next.
The characters are likeable but apart from Harry not particularly well fleshed out. Harry has a dry sense of humor and he even has amusing dialogues with his subconscious at times.
‘You are me. How does that work?’
‘You’re unconscious, moron,’ my double said to me. ‘We can finally talk to one another.’
‘Oh I get it,’ I said. ‘You’re Evil Harry, lurking inside Good Harry. Right?’
I’m not Evil Harry. I’m just Subconscious Harry.
The book is entertaining and fast paced, there is a lot of sarcastic humor and some impressive world building. There is a touch of misogyny with the often scantily clad female characters, like in a James Bond story. Fans say it gets better as the series evolves. This could be read as a standalone, you don’t need to read the first book to follow the story and there is no cliffhanger compelling you to continue the series.
Jim Butcher is a special type of author. Most authors are hit and miss, or just have a consistent quality to their books. George R.R. Martin is an example of the former. Game of Thrones is an okay book. Clash of Kings is very good. Storm of Swords is fantastic. Feast for Crows is okay but slow. All the good characters were taken out of this one!. And Dance with Dragons is simply outstanding. JK Rowling is an example of the latter. Harry Potter is a consistent series, with no one book being weak or particularly outstanding when compared to the rest.
But Butcher is different. Storm Front is an intense book, with evenly paced action throughout the book and excellent exposition, with rich characters (all with unique personalities. You get to the point where you can almost predict what they'll say) that were clearly very well thought out and developed before he even started writing. Storm Front is great. And it's arguably the worst book of the Dresden Files. Why?
Not because it's bad.
Because every book just gets better, and better, and BETTER. Every book in this entire series, EVERY single one, is better than the previous. That's the kind of author Jim Butcher is. He displays this EXACT habit in the Codex Alera, and it's very prevalent in the Dresden Files.
Fool Moon is a fantastic book. So is Grave Peril, and Summer Knight, and Death Masks, and Blood Rites, and Dead Beat (this is where the series REALLY starts to get super intense, and just mind-numbingly good), and ALL of them, most recently Ghost Story and Cold Days (just finished that one today! SO GOOD.). They are all so insufferably good. I simply adore them. I just absolutely adore them.
But I haven't explained why they're so good. Actually, I kind of have, but lemme get it all together in just a paragraph or two here. Every character is unique in their own ways. I'm not an actual reviewer who can actually review characters and be entirely accurate because my own personal opinion will colorize my summary too much, and plus some characters are very dynamic, plus there are points where your entire opinion on one character will be flipped upside down because of who that character might be or who they might work with. So I won't bother trying to describe them to you, because they all change in so many ways, be it a huge revelation, simply changing as they mature and have new experiences, gain new titles, or make INSANELY unexpected decisions. It's impossible to easily define one character in just a few sentences. Can't be done.
The books start out being entirely about supernatural mysteries, but the series very quickly grows intimate with the reader, and it's about more than just solving the mystery. You care about Harry's love life and want him to be so happy that you're jealous of him, because you just start loving him. You want Murphy to get the respect she deserves because, darn it, she's such a hard-working woman who has seen some serious things in her life. Probably more than any other "normal" cop in the world. You want Morgan to get socked in the face, because he's a flipping jerk. I want to talk about so many other characters, but I just can't without spoiling big parts of the series. There are aspects of the characters I just mentioned that I want to talk about, but I can't. With these books, you get so much more than you see when you scratch and sniff the surface.
I love everything about these books and I can hardly describe any of it without acknowledging huge spoilers. This isn't even a review. I'm just gushing like any other hopeless fan.
If you're even REMOTELY interested in the supernatural, enjoy fantasy, or like detective stories, you will LOVE this series. I freaking hate the mystery genre, normally (Sherlock is literally the lamest pop culture icon in existence), but these books are so good about it that I don't even notice or care. They're too good for me to be concerned.
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I struggled to really connect with this second of the Harry Dresden novels. Whether this was because I was struggling with my concentration in general or because of the storytelling I cannot be sure. It just didn't grip me the way the first novel did.
There is still the same snark present and an overall character development for everyone, but especially Harry, that should have made this a truly enjoyable read. I suspect that it was actually the mythology behind the different ways that one could become a werewolf and the struggles to figure out what type it was that was committing these murders. It just all felt a little bit off somehow, kind of hinky and cobbled together without too much thought. It is an Urban Fantasy Novel so you don't expect versimilitude but you do expect the author to have thoroughly thought through the more fantastical aspects of the tale and it just doesn't feel that way - to this reader at least.
Plenty of guts and gore, if thats your thing - personally, I'm not bothered by it in the slightest but it is starting to feel a little overdone and (dare I say it) boring. Certainly the best bits for me are poor old Harry's attempts to get along in a society that he is not really a part of - this goes for the Magical Community from which he has all but been ex-communicated and also Human Society because he isn't fully Human as far as they are concerned. I love his clumsy social maladroitness.
Definitely not giving up on this series just yet as there is something that does speak to me about it all.
This review has been a long time coming. I actually read this book between the 10th and 16th June 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about all the plot lines. Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.

Six months after the events of *Storm Front*, a grizzly murder points toward a werewolf as the culprit, wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden is brought in to help track down the beast.
One of my favourite parts of this book is the different types of werewolf. The worldbuilding implied in the different ways one can take on the qualities of a wolf is superb. Harry is a lot better than in the first book—I didn't have anywhere near as many moments of frustration over him being an idiot or sexist. Butcher has a talent for making me feel the stress of the situation—things just get worse and worse as time goes on, and I can really *feel* Harry's pain and fatigue.
Harry's stupid choices from the first book actually have *consequences* in this one, which is nice. He doesn't just get away with keeping things from Murphy or getting involved with Marcone—these things *matter* and come back to bite him in the ass. And then there's the sheer *carnage* of this book—a body count that makes Victor Sells' killing spree look like a minor misdemeanour, and I *love it!*
There are only a couple of things I didn't care for. Harry's chauvinism has been somewhat downplayed, as I mentioned, but it's very much still there. And then there's this new character we're introduced to, apparently very important to Harry, whose only real role is to be his "woman in the fridge," so to speak. Not a fan of that kind of writing.
Overall, however, those problems are minor and didn't take away from my overall enjoyment. In my opinion, this is a fun, blood-soaked werewolf romp and an excellent second entry in this series.


This story had everything that I look for in an engaging book; it has a good balance between the various aspects of this story - mystery, crime, thriller, horror, detective and paranormal - and blends them with well written humour that was dry and helped to keep it from being too heavy. This story surprised me a few times and I enjoyed trying to second guess where Mr Butcher would take us next!
I added the narration too and I alternated between reading and listening to the tale. I feel that the narration by James Marston helped to bring our hero, Harry Dresden to life.
Grave Peril (book 3) is already added to my Amazon wish list.
