Even Hand - Jim Butcher

 Even Hand - Jim Butcher

Caveat Emptor.

Jim Butcher is one of the biggest names in urban fantasy.

Suffering from curiosity, I decided to try Even Hand, a lengthy short story first published in 2010 in P N Elrod’s Dark and Stormy Knights (I know. I should have realised at this point.) and later included in Beyond the Pale (!!) by Henry Herz and Urban Enemies by Joseph Nassise.

Even Hand is not narrated by Butcher’s main character, Harry Dresden (More on Dresden later). The narrator is Gentleman John Marcone, a Chicago crime boss. If you are already feeling queasy, you are correct in your aesthetic judgement.

The opening sequence sees Marcone shooting two people in the head in a warehouse. He boasts that getting away with murder is about the choice of location. Mob boss shoots enemy mob members in waterfront warehouse. Story written in 2010. Some cliches should be taken to a waterfront warehouse and shot in the head. He then sends the third individual back to his boss with a message. No doubt, this individual would be unable to identify the waterfront warehouse. Marcone then has fairly meaningless conversations with two cardboard cut-out stereotypes as the first scene draws to a close. He even tells us that he is not Harry Dresden, showing that he is aware that his audience would be expecting a first person narrative in that character.

Somehow, this piece of writing has made its way into three anthologies.

Just in case you might think I am being unfair in judging Butcher by this narrative, his main character is a wizard in contemporary Chicago. Dresden likes to wear a leather duster coat and a broad brimmed hat, as though he were appearing in The Long Riders. Harry relies on guns quite often. 

The best that I can say about reading Jim Butcher is that it is possibly better than reading nothing. However, thinking of the gun-toting cosplayers that are currently endangering America, and consequently the rest of the world, there is even a reasonable degree of doubt about that. 

I am sure that it is possible to write thought provoking urban fantasy. On the evidence of Even Hand, though, Mr Butcher is to good writing as Mcdonalds is to nutrition.