Story Skeleton—Storm Front

Story structure relates to the psychological appeal of narrative, that which engages readers and builds in them a sense of anticipation—a desire to know what happens next. Our ongoing exploration now delves into mysteries, illustrating yet again the universality of story structure, albeit from a different angle.

 

By David Griffin Brown

Hardboiled Wizardry

By the time Jim Butcher’s Storm Front hit shelves in 2000, the hardboiled detective had already worn a dozen new skins—lawyer, journalist, forensic tech—but none had wielded a staff and pentacle. Harry Dresden is a magical PI in Chicago with all the familiar fixtures of a Chandler mystery: a down-on-his-luck detective, a corrupt city, a femme fatale, and a secret too dangerous to name. But this time, there’s a demon behind the door, and the murder weapon might be a thunderstorm.

Harry Dresden wasn’t the first wizard detective. Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories used spellcraft in place of forensics as early as the 1960s. Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I. series brought hardboiled narration to a fully fantastical world in the late 80s. But Storm Front did something different: it dropped a trench-coated wizard into the real world and gave him a homicide case. It turned the urban fantasy detective into a genre blueprint. After Dresden, a wave of wizard PIs followed—each solving magical murders with a blend of cynicism, spellwork, and reluctant heroism. So even if Butcher didn’t start the trend, he certainly solidified it.

Storm Front is first-person, fast-talking, and cynical. The protagonist has a personal code. The women are beautiful and potentially lethal. The cops are skeptical, the mob is watching, and the client isn’t telling the whole truth. But where Sam Spade might have packed a snub-nosed revolver, Dresden carries a blasting rod. He brews potions before an interrogation. He summons faeries for witness testimony. And his enemies—while still capable of human cruelty—often come with claws.

Magic, in Jim Butcher’s hands, is just another way to raise the stakes. When a heart bursts out of someone’s chest, the horror isn’t metaphorical. But the structure is still classic mystery, though with the high stakes of thriller. There’s a locked-room murder. There’s a string of clues. There’s a chain of suspects. And at the center, there’s a detective doing what detectives do: poking at the machinery of secrets until it cracks open.

What makes Harry Dresden different isn’t just that he’s a wizard. It’s that he wants to be Marlowe, but he can’t quite pull it off. He gets beat up, knocked out, and threatened by monsters. He narrates with bravado, but he’s awkward with women, earnest with friends, and quick to blame himself when things go wrong. He calls it chivalry, though it’s more often chauvinism. But either way, it marks a tonal shift. Spade and Marlowe kept their cards close. Dresden wears his heart on his sleeve—and then gets it punched, clawed, or hexed.

Plot Points

The Detective and his Methods

Mysteries traditionally begin with an introduction to the detective, and Storm Front follows suit—with a twist. We start with an intro to the protagonist and his world. Harry Dresden is Chicago's only wizard-for-hire, with a listing in the Yellow Pages. In a setting where supernatural creatures lurk behind a thin veil of disbelief, Harry is one of the few that people can call when the impossible intrudes. Ghost in your basement? Troll on the expressway? He’s your man.

The opening scene in his office establishes tension with a comic tone. Harry is broke, behind on rent, and treated like a crank by the mailman. He’s a lone operator at the fringe of both the magical and mundane worlds. We don’t see his investigative methods in action yet, but we do get the setup: the blend of noir sensibility with urban fantasy vibes. The blasting rod is real, but so is the rent.

This is our baseline: the hard-luck detective, isolated and underappreciated, waiting for the phone to ring—and about to be pulled into two cases that will spiral out of control.

The Initial Puzzle, Case #1

The first call Harry receives is from a jittery woman who wants help finding her missing husband, but she’s not willing to say much over the phone. He sets a time to meet her in person. But immediately afterward, he gets a second call—this time from Lt. Karrin Murphy of Chicago PD’s Special Investigations unit. There’s been a double homicide with signs of magical involvement. She needs Harry—now.

So we have two cases presented back-to-back. Both involve magic. Both will eventually converge. But for now, one involves murder, and the other will pay the rent. That difference establishes hierarchy and urgency: Murphy’s case takes precedence.

This Case A / Case B setup is common in noir and procedural fiction. It lets the author plant multiple mysteries that the protagonist must juggle, with the narrative tension building from their eventual overlap. Butcher uses the structure to keep the pacing sharp and the stakes layered.

Gathering Evidence, Case #1

Harry arrives at the Madison Hotel to consult on the crime scene Murphy called about. A man and a woman are dead—Tommy Tomm, connected to the gangster Marcone’s criminal empire, and Jennifer Stanton, an escort affiliated with Bianca the vampire. Their hearts have exploded. There are no signs of physical trauma beyond their gruesomely ruptured chests.

Harry knows right away that black magic is involved—powerful and completely illegal in the wizard world. That puts him in danger. He’s already on thin ice with the White Council due to a past infraction, and the presence of this kind of magic in his city implicates him by proximity. Still, he doesn’t hesitate to investigate. He notices the overturned purse, the high-end perfume, Tommy Tomm’s Rolex. Murphy trusts him—but not completely—and her partner Carmichael makes no effort to hide his contempt.

The Point of No Return, Case #1

Outside the crime scene, Harry is intercepted by “Gentleman” Johnny Marcone. The mob boss strongarms Harry into his limo for a private conversation. Marcone is smooth, measured, and dangerous. He offers Harry a bribe to stop digging into the case. Harry refuses.

Then comes the Soulgaze—a Dresden-specific mechanic where locking eyes with a wizard means both parties get a glimpse into each other’s soul. Harry sees a predator who kills without remorse, but also a man who regrets at least one thing deeply. Marcone sees Harry’s stubborn integrity and, unlike most, isn’t shaken by it. It’s a moment of mutual recognition and a handshake on the genre level: these two are moral opposites but thematic peers. Both operate by a code. Both wield power in a broken system.

In mysteries, the point of no return represents a ratcheting up of the stakes. Harry was already going to work this case—both cases in fact. But along comes a mobster to threaten him, in such a way that adds a new threat, complication, and reason for the detective to refuse to back down.

The Initial Puzzle, Case #2

Harry returns to his office to meet with his new client, Monica. She’s skittish and doesn’t want to provide her husband’s name—only that he’s been acting strangely, experimenting with magic, and vanished days ago. Eventually, she admits the truth: his name is Victor Sells, and he might have gone up to their summerhouse in Lake Providence. She suspects something is deeply wrong.

She gives Harry three envelopes: one with a $500 retainer, another with a photo and contact details, and a third containing a dried scorpion husk. Harry doesn’t sense any active magic in it, but he stores it away uneasily.

Structurally, this is also a low-key point of no return. Harry takes the case because he needs the money—the retainer definitely secures his commitment. And the scorpion is a breadcrumb of foreshadowing. Victor Sells may be experimenting with dark magic.

Enter the Love Interest

After taking Monica’s case, Harry heads to McAnally’s Pub, a quiet neutral zone for the magically inclined. The bartender Mac mentions a new drug on the street: ThreeEye. It's a throwaway reference for now, but placed here near the beginning, we can assume it’ll come back with teeth.

Susan Rodriguez enters. She’s a journalist for the Midwestern Arcane—sharp, stylish, and fishing for a story. She flirts with Harry under the guise of asking questions about the recent murders. He dodges. She pushes harder. Eventually, she tricks him into agreeing to a dinner date on Saturday night. As she leaves, Harry realizes she got more from him than he intended—and that he doesn’t mind.

Gathering Evidence, Case #2

Around midnight, Harry drives out to Lake Providence to look for Victor Sells. The neighborhood is expensive. The house seems quiet, and at this stage of his investigation, he doesn’t have reasonable cause to break in. So Harry takes the magical route: he performs a summoning.

Using milk, honey, bread, and blood, he calls up a small faerie named Toot. In exchange for a bit of food, Toot spills what he knows: several people have been visiting the house, and there have been sex parties.

Then Morgan arrives. He’s a Warden of the White Council, and he’s spoiling for an execution. He suspects Harry was involved in the murders and reminds him of the Doom of Damocles—a suspended sentence that would see Harry beheaded if he breaks the wizardly laws again. Morgan’s appearance doesn’t shift Harry’s immediate trajectory, but it raises the stakes. He’s being watched. If he puts one magical toe out of line, he’s dead.

Gathering Evidence, Case #1

Before investigating further, Harry wakes Bob, an air spirit housed in a skull in his lab, and brews two potions: an escape potion for practical use, and a love potion to appease Bob’s lascivious conditions for cooperation. This is Harry’s version of detective prep: not gun and lockpicks, but potions, pentacles, and a sunlight spell folded into paper.

He heads to Bianca’s estate—she’s a dangerous vampire and Jennifer Stanton’s former employer. After surrendering his staff at the gate, Harry interviews Bianca, who suggests that Harry himself might be the killer. She attacks. Harry defends himself using his pentacle and the folded sunlight charm, forcing her into her monstrous form and extracting the information he came for: a phone number for Jennifer’s friend, Linda Randall, who has left the escort business to work as a chauffeur for a rich couple, the Beckitts.

He calls Linda and hears airport announcements in the background, so he heads to O’Hare. There, she admits she was in a relationship with Jennifer. Jennifer had invited Linda to join her and Tommy Tomm on the night they died, but she declined. Linda flirts and evades, clearly hiding something. When the Beckitts arrive—rich, attractive, and strangely dead behind the eyes—Linda pretends Harry is an ex-boyfriend. Harry gives her his card and leaves.

At home, he’s ambushed by a man in a trench coat—Harry doesn’t get a good look at him before the man knocks him out. Someone clearly wants to send a message, but is it coming from Marcone or Victor Sells? Since Harry hasn’t been in direct contact with Victor, it seems more likely that this was one of Marcone’s thugs.

After recovering, Harry spends the night analyzing the magical method behind the murder spell. He concludes that it required immense energy—far beyond what most practitioners can manage—but he’s not sure how the murderer accomplished this.

The next morning, still concussed, Harry reports his findings to Murphy at the station. While there, he witnesses a ThreeEye addict being processed. The addict looks at Harry and mutters something about “He Who Walks Behind”—a reference to a powerful, unseen entity from Harry’s past. It confirms what Harry already feared: the drug gives users second sight, and someone is using it to muscle into the magical underworld.

Harry’s Date Goes Badly—a midpoint crisis for the romance arc

After Harry collapses at the police station due to his concussion and lack of sleep, Murphy drives him home and demands he get some rest. That night, a thunderstorm rolls in—similar to the one from the night of the murders. Lightbulb moment: Harry wonders if the killer is tapping into storm energy for magical amplification.

While Harry is in the shower, Susan Rodriguez arrives for their scheduled date, which Harry had forgotten. She’s dressed to impress and eager for information. But before they can talk, a toad-like demon crashes into the apartment, summoned to kill Harry.

They make it down into the cellar where Harry gives Susan one of the potions he brewed earlier. Oops, she drinks the love potion by mistake. This turns her into a giddy, unhelpful mess. With the other potion, they manage to escape into the street. Outside, they’re confronted by a shadowy projection of the summoner. The figure taunts Harry, then calls the demon to finish the job.

Harry channels lightning from the storm—mirroring the killer’s own methods—to banish the demon. The connection is clear: this is the same style of magic used in the murders.

Immediately after, Morgan appears again. He accuses Harry of summoning the demon himself, in violation of the First Law of Magic. He declares that the White Council will convene in the next few days for Harry’s trial. If found guilty, he’ll be executed. This ticking clock increases the stakes further.

Midpoint: The Second Murder

Just as Harry begins to connect the dots, the police detain him and bring him to a new crime scene: Linda Randall has been murdered. Murphy is furious and deeply suspicious. She knows Harry spoke with her and believes he’s withholding information. She shows him the business card he gave Linda—now logged into evidence. Then she tells him to come in for questioning the next day, which might well result in his arrest. A second ticking clock. Another layer of pressure.

On his way out, Harry is attacked again. It’s the same man in the trench coat, and this time he recognizes him—it’s Gimpy, one of Marcone’s thugs, and he manages to clip a bit of Harry’s hair. Harry fights back and scratches him in return, drawing blood. Gimpy gets away, but Harry uses the blood to cast a tracking spell.

The spell leads Harry to the Varsity, a club owned by Marcone. He bursts in with a magical display and identifies Gimpy as his attacker. Marcone denies knowing anything about the stolen hair. Harry forces Gimpy to reveal the wound on his wrist, proving his version of events—and the implication that Marcone’s man is playing both sides. When Gimpy panics and reaches for a weapon, Marcone’s bodyguard shoots him dead.

This is a midpoint in classic form: a new death, a false suspect eliminated, and the real villain’s reach revealed. The murderous wizard has Harry’s hair now. The next storm will mean his death: ticking clock number three.

The Two Cases Converge

Emotionally and physically exhausted, Harry retreats to Linda Randall’s apartment. He lies down beside the bed and sinks into despair. How will he track down the killer before he’s either arrested by Murphy, tried and executed by the White Council, or murdered by the evil wizard? But while lying there, he spots a second film canister, the same as the one he found outside the lake house, the one he still has in his pocket, but this one isn’t empty. The connection clicks.

Just then, someone enters the apartment. Harry confronts him. The man identifies himself as Donny Wise, a photographer. He admits that Linda hired him to photograph a ritual-sex gathering at Victor Sells’ lake house. She planned to use the photos for blackmail.

Harry now understands how the two cases intertwine. Victor Sells, Monica’s missing husband, is linked to Jennifer Stanton and Linda Randall. The murders, the orgy, the blackmail—it’s all the same story. Harry burns the film to keep it out of the wrong hands and prepares to confront Monica for the full truth.

The Final Puzzle Piece

Monica Sells’ neighborhood is eerily quiet—empty houses, quiet streets, something rotting beneath the surface.

When Monica finally lets him in, they Soulgaze. Harry sees the depth of her fear—Victor has gone too far, and she’s terrified for her children. Monica admits that she didn’t hire Harry to find Victor. She was too afraid to reveal the whole truth. By framing it as a simple missing-persons case, she hoped Harry would discover enough on his own to intervene. She didn’t know what Victor was capable of—only that something dark and dangerous had taken hold of him.

With this confession, the mystery is fully illuminated. Victor is behind the murders. He’s been using storm magic and emotional sacrifice to power spells—and now he has Harry’s hair.

All Is Lost

Harry tries to contact Murphy to warn her about Victor Sells. He learns from her partner, Carmichael, that she’s already at his office with a search warrant. When he calls his office, Murphy answers the phone, and she’s just about to open the drawer to his desk containing Victor Sells’ scorpion talisman.

He races downtown. When he arrives, the door to his office is ajar. Inside, Murphy is unconscious—poisoned by the talisman that has animated into a giant magical scorpion.

What follows is a brutal fight. Harry loses his staff and rod. Murphy is dead weight—conscious but delirious. He drags her into the building’s elevator. The scorpion rips through the roof. Harry uses wind magic to blast the elevator to the top of the shaft, crushing the creature. They both nearly die in the process.

This is the all-is-lost moment: Harry is injured, weaponless, and Murphy is dying. He has failed to protect her. He has failed to stay ahead of the killer. And a storm is rolling in.

Climax: Nabbing the Culprit

With Murphy rushed off in an ambulance, Harry regroups at McAnally’s Pub and borrows a car. He’s going to the lake house.

But first: Morgan shows up again, this time to take Harry into custody. The Warden believes Harry summoned the scorpion and is responsible for all the deaths. Harry tries to explain, but Morgan won’t listen. Harry throws a chair and knocks him out, then drives off—his execution is almost assured.

Harry arrives at the lake along with the storm. The house is a nexus of dark energy, confirming his suspicions about Victor's activities. He also finds cases of ThreeEye, proving the connection to the turf war and thus Victor’s connection to and infiltration of Marcone’s operations.

Inside, Victor is preparing a final thaumaturgic spell with a squirming rabbit and the strand of Harry’s hair. Harry uses a mundane object—the empty film canister—to break the magic circle and throw Victor’s spell off-course. The house explodes into chaos.

Victor unleashes fire, which ignites the house. One of the Beckitts arrives and shoots Harry. A swarm of scorpions is released. Harry fights from the kitchen, shielding himself with whatever magic he can muster.

Then Victor summons the toad demon. But he makes a mistake—he speaks the demon’s name aloud: Kalshazzak. That gives Harry power. As the house burns, Harry handcuffs himself to a balcony rail and pulls Victor over the edge. Victor falls into the fire and scorpions below, consumed by his own summoned forces.

Harry, bleeding and battered, loses consciousness.

Resolution

Harry wakes up in the rain outside the burning house. Morgan is there, performing CPR. He saw everything.

Morgan agrees to testify that Harry acted lawfully. The White Council convenes and lifts the Doom of Damocles. Harry is no longer under the death sentence.

Murphy survives. She doesn’t fully forgive Harry, but she knows he saved her.

Susan writes an article: “Date with a Demon.” She visits Harry in the hospital. They plan another dinner, this time without monsters. Her presence in the story is no longer incidental—it's the start of a relationship that will continue as the series unfolds.

The mystery is solved. The killer is dead. The detective has survived. But just barely.

The Women of Storm Front

Storm Front borrows heavily from noir, and that includes the baggage. Nearly every woman Harry meets is described through the male gaze—legs, curves, lips, hair. All are stunning. None are ordinary. Linda Randall, a former escort turned chauffeur, is pure pulp: sexually provocative, emotionally unreadable, and dead before she can become more than an archetype. Bianca, the vampire madam, is classic noir danger—equal parts seduction and threat, her power expressed through glamour and violence. Even Jennifer Stanton, the book’s first corpse, is sexualized in death. Harry notices her breasts before he registers the murder scene.

Murphy, the cop, is a step toward complexity—tough, principled, and unimpressed by Harry’s chivalry. But he still opens doors she doesn’t want opened and filters her authority through her looks. Susan Rodriguez, the journalist love interest, is smart and driven, but gets love-potioned into comic relief.

This approach has drawn criticism for its casual misogyny and embodiment of nice-guy syndrome, though to Butcher’s credit, this changes. Later books give women more agency, and Harry’s narration becomes less ogling, more introspective. But in Storm Front, the women are still dancing to a tune written in the noir era—and the lyrics haven’t aged well.

Magic as Power and Isolation

In Storm Front, magic is both an asset and a liability. It grants Harry Dresden incredible tools: tracking spells from a drop of blood, a spirit advisor in a skull, defensive blasts in combat. But those same abilities isolate him. He’s the only openly practicing wizard in Chicago, and nobody—not the cops, not the White Council—fully trusts him.

Magic instills the detective with an investigative edge, much like Sherlock’s impressive powers of deduction. It allows Harry to read souls, sense supernatural residue, and hurl fire in a pinch—but none of it comes without risk. The White Council, his own governing body, watches him constantly. He once killed in self-defence with magic, which means he lives under the Doom of Damocles: one misstep and he’ll be executed.

This setup reframes the classic noir motif: the detective under suspicion, shadowed by authority. Butcher swaps out the crooked commissioner for a council of secretive wizards. Like many noir heroes, Harry works alone, with both sides waiting for him to fail.

Magic also keeps him off-grid—his presence short-circuits most electronics, his allies can’t understand what he does, and his enemies are often more magical than mortal. When he’s attacked by a demon, there’s no backup to call. The cops can’t help. The Council might execute him for even surviving. The responsibility to act—and to not overstep—falls entirely on him.

Importantly, Butcher never lets magic become a shortcut. It complicates as often as it helps. Potions go sideways. Faerie informants speak in riddles. Even Soulgazing doesn’t guarantee answers. Harry still has to connect the dots the old-fashioned way—through observation, instinct, and gut.

For writers, that’s the balance to strike. If magic makes it too easy to uncover secrets, the mystery collapses. If it makes things too strange to follow, the logic breaks down. Magic can deepen the stakes, but it also risks undercutting tension unless it comes with cost, limitation, or uncertainty. Readers need to feel the puzzle still matters, even if the tools for solving it are arcane.

In Conclusion

Storm Front hinges on a twist—but not the kind that reconfigures the story in hindsight. The surprise is structural: the two cases are one. It’s a satisfying click, but not a paradigm shift. The emotional draw comes not from misdirection and a final revelation. Instead, the fantasy-thriller edge provides a build toward a dramatic showdown.

That distinction matters because it reflects the kind of arc Butcher is setting up. Harry Dresden doesn’t undergo a major internal transformation in this book. There’s no fundamental shift in how he sees the world or himself. He’s still stubborn, still broke, still sticking to his outmoded chivalry. But what is beginning here is a series arc—one that lays the groundwork for future change.

Storm Front sets up the contours of Harry’s world and the limits of his power. He’s dangerous, but under scrutiny. Useful, but mistrusted. His relationships—with Murphy, with Susan, with the Council—are all unstable. Even his past, barely glimpsed here, casts a long shadow. The story doesn’t resolve those tensions. It sharpens them. And that’s the point. This isn’t a closed loop. It’s a first strike. The real arc isn’t about who Harry becomes in this novel. It’s about what kind of man he might have to become to survive the next one.

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David Griffin Brown is an award-winning short fiction writer and co-author of Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling and Story Skeleton: The Classics. He holds a BA in anthropology from UVic and an MFA in creative writing from UBC, and his writing has been published in literary magazines such as the Malahat Review and Grain. In 2022, he was the recipient of a New Artist grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. David founded Darling Axe Editing in 2018, and as part of his Book Broker interview series, he has compiled querying advice from over 100 literary agents. He lives in Victoria, Canada, on the traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.