and Hendricks, whose introductions comprise basically the whole thing. Dresden is still very much in detective mode when he gets into Marcone's car, and being forcibly offered a ride by a crime lord isn't doing anything for his nerves, or his mood. He's snarky to both of them, and while I understand Dresden wanting to level the playing field after Hendricks threatened him at the end of the previous chapter, we aren't presented with any solid reason for his instant dislike of Marcone beyond "crime lord - bad", which... kind of doesn't feel like enough of a reason. I don't have good comparators here, so I can't strictly speaking say that this feels out of character. He's perfectly capable of being polite to Bianca, but Dresden is weird enough about women that it's not a useful contrast. We don't get any indication that Dresden has a serious problem with criminals in a general way. Honestly, I might think Dresden was just having a bad day here were it not for the fact that he keeps having a problem with Marcone throughout most of the series, even in the face of mounting evidence that Marcone is in a lot of ways a decent person. I'm trying to think if there's anything in Dresden's backstory that would account for it, but if anything it feels like Dresden's having apprenticed as a PI at Ragged Angel investigations, which specializes in missing children, might make him more positively disposed towards Marcone for his policy of not allowing his business to harm children. It's possible that Dresden just kind of can't with male authority figure, and that would make some sense, but his attitude towards, for example, The Merlin, actually updates over time in a way that his attitude towards Marcone...kind of doesn't, so this doesn't feel like an entirely satisfactory answer.
After unsuccessfully attempting to hire Dresden to not investigate the murder, Marcone catches Dresden in a soul gaze, the description and aftermath of which take up the largest part of the chapter. This is different from other soul gazes we get later in the series. We aren't actually shown the landscape or imagery of Marcone's soul, just Dresden's interpretation of it. I think this is also how we get the leader of the Street Wolves in Fool Moon, and I know it's how we get Monica Sells later on in this one. By Death Masks we're actually being shown the contents of soul gazes rather than just being told about them, so presumably the change occurs somewhere in books 3 or 4 - but I don't at the moment remember whether Dresden actually gazes anyone in either of those. (What he does with Susan at the end of Grave Peril isn't a normal soulgaze since they've gazed each other already). Aside from making it godawful difficult to choose a picture for this blog post, there's nothing wrong with writing soul gazes this way, although it's certainly less evocative.
We learn that Marcone is cold, calculating, disciplined, and predatory. That he's committed to both his goals and his people, and that he has a deep dark secret from which he draws his resolve. Aside from nemesis itself, Marcone's Big Secret is the only plot thread established in this book that, at the time of this writing, is still going on. And while I'm not convinced that Jim Butcher really had with situation with Nemesis worked out until like, Death Masks, and maybe not until as recently as Proven Guilty, he clearly had the general shape of the situation with Marcone, Helen Beckett, and the girl we still know only as Persephone, in mind here, even though we won't learn all the details until White Night.
Dresden is upset that Marcone tricked him into a soul gaze, and seems to be even more upset that Marcone isn't shocked, horrified, or overwhelmed by what he finds in Dresden's soul. Is it possible that Dresden's issue with Marcone is actually Marcone's more or less unconditional acceptance of Dresden? Like, he doesn't like Dresden, doesn't necessarily respect him, especially early on, but especially early on fucking no one else trusts Harry. No one else, even Ebenezer, is just... blithely comfortable with Dresden's past, or his current character flaws. On some level, virtually everyone else Dresden knows sees him as either a tool to be manipulated or a monster to be either feared or controlled, and even most of the people with the former attitude focus on his destructive potential. But while Marcone is perfectly happy to play on other people seeing Dresden that way, he never, even at the very beginning, sees Dresden as anything other than a person trying his best to do the right thing. The only person who comes close to displaying a similar attitude is Michael, but even Michael is like, Concerned about Dresden all the damn time. Having the literal crime lord just... treat you like a person, when no one else does, has gotta be unsettling as hell. In any case, Dresden reacts by being a dick and making threats, and then immediately feels like an idiot, which is not unreasonably, although why he thinks Marcone will become a threat if he sees Dresden as "weak" I honestly don't know. Hurting people who aren't a threat to you isn't good business. But at least Dresden is on time for his appointment with Monica.
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