Dead Beat

A vampire named Mavra is blackmailing Harry Dresden, using evidence that would destroy his friend Karrin Murphy's career. Her price: the Word of Kemmler, a book of necromantic power that six necromancers are also racing to acquire before Halloween, when the dead rise easily and the power in the Word would be catastrophic in the wrong hands. The seventh Dresden Files novel pits Harry against a clock, a vampire, and half a dozen extremely dangerous practitioners of death magic in a race through Chicago's shadows that culminates in one of the series' most memorable climaxes.

James Marsters brings Harry's first-person narration its essential voice, sardonic even under extreme pressure, and his Dead Beat performance is a high point of the series in audio. The escalating tension of the countdown to Halloween is handled with skill, and Marsters makes the necromancers feel genuinely threatening rather than cartoonish. At just over fifteen hours, Dead Beat rewards listeners who have followed the series from the beginning with payoff that has been building for several volumes.