Last time, Harry gives up the third of his four names to a demon because he doesn’t want to bother looking up the information he was handed himself or telling Murphy so she could explain because then he’d be letting Murphy know anything about what’s going on.

He heads to some nice townhouse with privacy hedges to find out what horrible thing happened.

The strobing blue lights were almost comforting, by now. I’d seen them so many times that it felt, in an unsettling way, like a homecoming.

Harry is apparently immune to standard conditioning where if every time you saw flashing lights you then saw a mutilated body, you’d start being more disturbed rather than less.

A chill ran down my neck, and I stopped, looking at the rows and rows of elegantly illuminated hedge sculptures, flower beds, and rows of shrubbery around me. I was abruptly certain that someone was out in the darkness; I could feel eyes on me.

Yet another illustration of why it’s good to know if a character is supposed to be reliable or not.

I could see nothing, but I would have bet money that there was someone out there.

Sadly no one’s there to take that bet, which might have motivated Harry to flick on wizard vision and actually find out. Without that, he just stands there until the feeling fades, which may or may not have anything to do with the thing leaving, and then heads in.

Time for Murphy’s partner:

Shorter than average, rounder than average, slobbier than average, and with piggier eyes than average, Carmichael was a skeptic, a doubter, and a razor-sharp cop. He came down the stairs in his soup-stained old tie and shirtsleeves. “It’s about fucking time. Jesus Christ, Dresden.” He wiped a hand over his sweating brow.

Ah, noir. Where the men who aren’t you are gross slobs but the women are all hot.

Harry is weirdly on the ball today and notes it’s weird that the guy wanted him there when Carmichael thinks he’s a fake scamming everyone out of tax dollars.

I still think you’re full of shit with this wizard-magic business. But Christ almighty, there are times when I wish you weren’t.”

So apparently whatever happened was worse than last book’s magically held together corpse porn.

Anyway, he says to go ahead, he’ll wait for the FBI and try to slow them down. Why, it’s like Harry is getting along with the police!

“I hear things about you and John Marcone. What’s the deal?”
I shook my head. “No deal. He’s lying scum.”
Carmichael studied me intently, and then nodded. “You ain’t much of a liar, Dresden. I don’t think you could keep a straight face about something like this. I believe you.”

Yup, getting along. How will this inevitably get fucked up?

Still strangely on the ball, Harry promptly points out the inconsistency of saying he’s a terrible liar except at claiming to be a wizard. Because it’s just a stupid plot hole, the explanation? Carmichael grimaced and looked away. “Do I look like a fucking moron to you?

It’s not unworkable, mind. You could have Carmichael believe that Harry is sincere but wrong. Lots of people show up at police stations sincerely but wrongly thinking they had a psychic vision of something.

Hm. So the real problem with this sort of thing is the part where Harry can set things on fire with his mind, but actual illusionists can do some cool stuff, to the point that it’s a valid skeptical viewpoint to assume something was faked even if you personally don’t know how it was pulled off.

Take Harry’s earlier interaction with definitely a very nice friend FBI man. Let’s say Harry was all, “Uh, totally am?” and made a ball of fire hover above his hand. FBI guy could dismiss it as just some parlor trick. The best proof something isn’t a parlor trick is to show it actually affecting things, both because that shows it’s more than just a trick of the light and because if there was a non-magic “trick” to blowing a door off its hinges at will, the army would already know it so all that’s left is magic. But you really can’t respond to the FBI not believing you by blowing something up next to them, as people generally take that as threatening.

Harry’s been around Carmichael for longer, but Carmichael seems like the sort of person to be really stubborn, so even if he’s done lots and lots of little tricks by now, it’s possible for Carmichael’s attitude to be that yes, he doesn’t know how Harry’s doing it but that doesn’t make it magic. And in a hypothetical version of this where Harry isn’t a raging asshole, he would avoid stuff that’s threatening or traumatizing to convince people, leaving him with a much smaller toolkit.

Besides, basically every interaction in the book is playing out like Harry has no problem staring at him in the face so soulgaze functionally doesn’t exist.

Murphy standing at the head of the stairs in a crisp grey business jacket and slacks, with sensible low heels and jewelry the color of steel. Her earrings seemed to be little more than bright beads of silver in her ears, which I had never really noticed when she had worn her golden hair long. Murphy’s earlobes were cute. She’d kill me, just for thinking it.

Holy shit that got creepy.

Okay, so, quick note that Harry still seems oblivious to the fact Murphy likely has no choice about dressing up because while her partner can wear a stained shirt women get punished for that, and then oh my god ew ew ew stop.

This sort of thing can work. This seems like it’s setting up for Harry being not-so-secretly in love with her, but it’s like my problem with just about every ship on the Big Bang Theory, he’s a horrible person who treats her terribly.

See, stuff like “cute earlobes” is sweet when it’s the person being so infatuated that they love totally random things just because it’s that person. But Harry also sizes up every other woman like a piece of meat, so instead it comes off as Harry actually ranking women on this standard and she happens to be the most well-formed. We’re also reminded that Murphy doesn’t like him and really, really doesn’t like how he treats her, and how he treats her feelings like it’s his favorite joke.

Plus, of course, the additional level of sleaze that is the fact he currently has a girlfriend.

Blood has a sweet sort of metallic odor.

I know writers need to try to find nice ways to describe things, but blood really doesn’t smell sweet. And mostly, it smells like blood. I think the fuckup here is that he’s thinking about tastes which you can classify into a couple different combinations.

More than anything, Harry should just be smelling meat, not only because blood is a component of that but because the didn’t remove the rest of the body either.

Time for the D&D buried lead description.

There was no furniture inside the master bedroom-and it was huge, large enough to make you wince at how far you’d have to go to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There was no carpeting. There were no decorations on the walls. There was no glass in the huge, single-pane window, letting in the October wind. The full moon shone down through it like a picture in a frame.
What the room did have was blood. There was blood all over, scattered in droplets and splashed in spurts against one wall. The scarlet footprints of something like a large wolf led in a straight line toward the shattered window. In the center of the room were the remains of a greater circle of summoning, its three rings of symbols carefully wrought in white chalk upon the wooden floor, burning sticks of incense interspersed among the symbols of the second ring.
What was left of Kim Delaney lay naked and supine on the bloodstained floor a few feet from the circle. The expression of shock and surprise on her face wouldn’t change until rigor set in. Her dark, once-glittering eyes stared up at the ceiling, and her lips were parted, as though in the middle of an
apology.
A large, wheel-section of flesh beneath her chin was missing, and with it Kim’s larynx and trachea. Bloody red meat was showing, the ragged ends of arteries and torn sections of muscle, and pale white bones gleamed at the bottom of the wound. Long rakes down her body had opened her like a Ziploc bag, leaving her covered in scarlet.

Once again we have an eviscerated but somehow still sexy corpse. Most ridiculous is Long rakes down her body had opened her like a Ziploc bag, leaving her covered in scarlet. She’s “opened up” but not in a way any of her actual entrails came out, just sexy, sexy red blood. There’s no smell of bile from her ruptured stomach, no shit smell from her intestines broken on the floor. She’s just white and scarlet and supine and so very naked.

Something went “click” in my head. Someone threw some kind of switch that just turned off my emotions entirely and immersed me in a surreal haze. I couldn’t be seeing this. It simply couldn’t be real. It had to be some sort of game or hoax, in which the actors would start giggling in a few moments, unable to contain the mirth of their prank.

That’s actually the rational response given everything about the scene seems fake.

I waited. But no one started giggling. I wiped at my forehead with my hand and found cold sweat there. My fingers began to shake.

This is so close to being good.

Harry is starting to freak out at the horror in front of him. But this isn’t just horrible. It’s pretty obvious what happened. She said she needed to know how to activate three circles. Harry refused to tell her how to do the third. She is now dead next to those three circles after whatever was inside walked out and killed her.

Harry then just acts grossed out and tries to get out of helping, instead of saying anything about the fact this is totally his fault and he’s so sorry. Incidentally, if he’d done that we’d skip the stupid thing that’s about to come, so I doubly hate him for it.

Interesting subnote, the time of death is the same as when Harry was chatting with the demon, meaning it’s possible this is werewolf guy’s first murder. Alternatively, the reason the demon seemed to be struggling with the question is because the werewolf is distinct from MacFinn, so exact blame for a particular death is divided up between the two based on how much the guy could’ve foreseen things.

Harry’s attempt to weasel out falls on deaf ears as Murphy points out this is easy as fuck. Monster broke circle, ate girl. Monster looks to be the toothy eviscerating sort, and so fits the loup-garou in Harry’s report because unlike some people she actually does the reading.

“Uh-huh,” I said, without turning around to look at Kim’s body again. “It makes sense.” And I told her what I had learned from the demon about Harley MacFinn, the Northwest Passage Project, and his antagonism with Marcone’s business interests. Murphy listened to me in utter silence.

I do have to wonder if this can possibly be new information for Murphy.

She then leads him to a photo:

a middle-aged, starkly handsome man, his skin deeply tanned, the bones of his face gaunt and sharp. He was smiling.

An attractive man!

Beside him in the picture was the amber-eyed woman from the department store where I’d run across the Alphas. She was also smiling. Her teeth were very white, very even, and her dark skin and silver-peppered hair went well with the man beside her.

And to make up for it we have the wtf of saying the woman in the picture’s physical traits go well with the guy, like she’s an accessory.

Around this point Harry thinks it’s weird Murphy is being really clipped and professional with him, and also keeps glaring. She leads him to the final spot:

a heavy, steel door there that opened onto a small, stark chamber, all of concrete, with no other exits. In the center of the chamber was another three-ring summoning circle, but this one’s symbols had been made from silver and set into the concrete of the floor. Short bars of what looked like a mixture of silver and obsidian were interspersed around the second circle, creating what would, if the circle was functional, be a very formidable barrier.
But the symbols had been marred, torn, broken. Several from the critical inner ring had been pried up from the floor and were simply missing. Some of the bars had been broken. The circle, as it was, was nonfunctional and worthless

Still in a sealed room, of course, so still a better place to try drawing the new circle, but then Harry couldn’t have seen a hot corpse in the bedroom therefore it didn’t happen that way. Pretty sure we’ll never get a reason for why she was naked.

And I abruptly understood Kim Delaney’s request.

Harry continues to be the worst detective.

she had attempted to recreate the greater summoning circle upstairs in the bedroom, to hold in MacFinn once the moon rose. As I had warned her would happen, she had failed.

It wasn’t an objective fact she’d fail, you ensured she’d fail.

She hadn’t had the knowledge necessary to understand how such a construct would function, and consequently, she hadn’t been able to make it work.

You did not TELL HER the knowledge necessary, therefore IT DIDN’T work.

MacFinn had killed her.

He obviously did his best to not kill her, given she’s been invited into his home and he held still as long as he could for her to get the circles going.

Harry will finally admit culpability after dragging this out and blaming everyone else as much first. It’s sort of the inverse version of last book’s bit about how what happened to Murphy is his fault, followed by paragraphs leading to him explaining that actually nope it wasn’t, all for the same purpose of trying to present it like Harry is oh-so-noble for taking on the blame.

Kim was dead because I had refused to share my knowledge with her, because I hadn’t given her my help.

Yes. It’s not about how stupid Kim couldn’t pull it off, it’s not about how mean MacFinn did the deed. You did this.

I had been so secure in my knowledge and wisdom; withholding such secrets from her had been the action of a concerned and reasoned adult speaking to an overeager child. I couldn’t believe my own arrogance, the utter confidence with which I had condemned her to death. I started to shake, harder, too many things pressing against my head, my heart. I could feel the pressure, somewhere inside of me, that switch on the inside of my head quivering, getting ready to flick back beneath a tide of raging anger, fury, regret, self-hatred. I took deep breaths and closed my eyes, trying not to let it happen.

If you’re thinking this is Harry finally taking fucking responsibility for how terrible he is, don’t worry.

I opened my eyes and looked up at Murphy. God, I needed to talk to her. I needed a friend. I needed someone to listen, to tell me it would be all right whether it was the truth or not.

Harry immediately makes it about himself again, and of course then meanyface Murphy is a jerk instead so he can be distracted by that and the narrative can get on with forgetting about this whole affair.

See, Murphy, as a character who is not Harry and therefore is a qualified detective protagonist, picked up and looked at the paper back in the bar. On it is clearly the same circles.

What follows next makes no sense.

And I realized why there was so much anger in Murphy’s eyes.
I stared at the sketch. “Karrin,” I began again. “Stars above, you’ve got to listen to me.” I took the sketch from her hands, my fingers trembling.
“Harry,” she said, in a calm tone. “You lying bastard, ” and on the word she drove her fist into my stomach, hard, doubling me over. The motion put my head within easy reach, and her fist took me across the jaw in a right cross that sent me to the floor like a lump of wet pasta, stars dancing in my vision.
I was only dimly aware of her taking the sketch back from me. She twisted my arms painfully behind my back, and snapped her handcuffs around my wrists. “You promised me,” she said, her voice furious. “You promised. No secrets. You lied to me all along. You played me like a sucker the entire while. Godammit, Dresden, you’re involved in this and people are dying.”
“Murph,” I mumbled. “Wait.”
She grabbed my hair, jerked my head back, and slammed me across the jaw again, near-berserk anger lending her strength. My head swam, and blackness closed over my vision for several seconds. “No more talking. No more lies ,” I heard her say, and she dragged me to my feet, shoved my face and chest against a wall, and began searching me for weapons. “No more people torn up like meat on a block. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

It’s not just that this is leaping to a lot of conclusions all at once, it’s that she just did this last book and she was wrong, therefore she’ll do it even more this book because that’s how things work. Besides, women! So crazy.

At least someone finally beat him up. He may not deserve this specific beating, but he’d avoided enough other deserved ones it works out fine.

Let’s pause to reiterate that even with the idiot ball of Murphy assuming him arguing with the girl followed by crumpling and discarding the circle means he did it and shouldn’t even be asked what was going on, this was still easily avoided.

All he had to do was tell Murphy about the MacFinn and nature park thing when he heard it, establishing he didn’t know anything about the guy before this. Failing that, any halfway human reaction to Kim’s death would’ve probably saved him, because he had ample chance to say his involvement before she rubbed his nose in the fact she knew he had something to do with it. Instead, Harry responds to seeing the death by trying to get out of telling her what’s going on, a behavior that, let’s face it, looks really fucking guilty and makes it clear that regardless, he’s a terrible human being.

I believe people referenced this as an example of Harry’s assholery biting him, but it doesn’t work. Making women pay for the fact Harry treats them badly doesn’t change that the book is misogynist, and having cartoonish cruelty result isn’t admitting real fault, it’s just making him a put-upon woobie. In conclusion, HATE.