Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 18

Photo by me.

Harry calls Murphy from the nearest payphone, and asks if they can meet, somewhere public but quiet enough to talk. Since it's pretty late at night, they end up at the "generic cafe" inside a Walmart supercenter in Wrigleyville. As best I can tell, while there was a Walmart in this area until 2023, it was a neighborhood market, which is almost the opposite of a supercenter. Neighborhood markets are grocery stores, not department stores, and considerably smaller, 40k or 50k square feet compared to a supercenter's 180k. Neighborhood markets also sometimes have gas pumps, which are uncommon at Walmart discount stores, and rarer still at supercenters. Chicago has two supercenters, but they're both farther out. Also the parking lot for the one near Wrigley field was on the roof.  I'm also having some trouble with "generic cafe" - first of all, it's a very odd phrase to use, especially from an author who's normally very competent at scene setting, and second, I could have sworn it was a McDonalds. This matters, a little, because I started reading these books when I was 17, and hadn't set foot in Walmart above a dozen times in my life until my late 20s. The first time I saw a McDonalds inside a Walmart, likely in Delaware (it may have been Maryland's eastern shore), I actually said, out loud "Oh, like in the Dresden Files", much to the confusion of my housemates. So I can't think of any reason I would have imagined this if it weren't the case, but my audiobook and ebook both say "generic cafe". Is it possible they go to a Walmart McDonalds in a later book? I actually went to some effort to try to find a Walmart that still had a McDonalds in it, to take a picture for this post, before I reread the chapter, but the one in Delaware (probably) has either switched theirs for a Subway or is just hiding from me, and the supercenters closest to my house and my parents' house both have Subways as well. The picture up there is of my local Walmart discount store. 

Anyways, Murphy asks Harry what's going on, and he tells her the shape of the thing, including how upset he is and how hopeless it feels. She asks why he called her, and he says he needs help, and the only backup he has is too inexperienced, that the list of people he trusts is basically just Murphy. She asks if he'll tell her what's going on, and he says he will, but warns her that knowing some of it could put her in danger, although part of why he's willing to do it now is that dealing with this stuff without the full picture would also be dangerous. He also tells her that if she tries to bring SI directly into the conflict, it will go very badly for her and everyone else involved, because bringing the mortal authorities into a supernatural conflict is the nuclear option, which I believe is the first time this comes up. Murphy agrees to these terms, if not enthusiastically, and Harry reads her in, including telling her about the White Council. She's gratifyingly pissed off at the Council on Harry's behalf, and spends most of the rest of the chapter asking clarifying questions. This is also what I would charitably describe as an odd writing choice. Her questions about Harry's potential suspects tell us something about how she thinks, including the level of intellectual caution she brings to ruling anything in or out, and her advice to focus on why Reuel was killed, and why Harry was attacked, in order to try and pin down who was responsible, is a valid thing to include, but a lot of this is repeating information the reader already has, much of which we didn't get that long ago, in a book that's not nearly long enough to require the kind of "recap episodes" that, for example, Derin Edala uses. The only new information we get is that the ghoul who attacked Harry committed several armed robberies on her way to Chicago, at each of which someone was abducted and probably eaten, that she's probably a hired killer who operates under the name "the Tigress", and that Harry is likely going to have to ask Lea for help talking to Titania and the Mothers. Probably the most significant thing that happens here is that Harry says he doesn't think Mab did it, but he can't put his finger on why, and Murphy says it's because if she had, she would have hired a less capable investigator. This gives us the beginnings of a sense of how Harry and Murphy work together when they're actually working together, which is important since this is the first book where they really do that. Harry trusts Murphy to check his reasoning, and she's often quicker to see the...structural elements of why people do things than Harry is. It's very X-files, actually, except she doesn't routinely overreach into ascribing specific psychological motivations to Harry being wrong about things. 

Harry says they need to get going, and is on the point of asking Murphy to do something, when the lights go out and a spooky fog comes up. Harry, naturally, pick up the salt shakers. 

Sorry for the very short post. A great deal of this chapter really is reiterating old information in ways that don't tell us anything new about it. The next one will likely be longer, and at the very least include fewer Walmart facts. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!