Par for the series in general, there were quite a few ridiculously funny moments in this installment of The Dresden Files. WARNING: Unmarked spoilers below!
- A passing remark suggests that Butters has gotten laid more recently than Harry has. This also happens during a scene where Molly does object reading on a corpse and, uh, picks up something. Harry then sulks, commenting on how he never gets something that "nice" during a psychic investigation.
- Harry briefly making a passing allusion to Molly's early days as an apprentice:
- Harry mocking bureaucracy and human nature with a minor shot at his old enemy - Latin:Harry: No force in the known universe can make a gang of folks naming their organization in Latin do much of anything on time. If they're all there by four, we'll know there's some kind of black magic involved.
- After Harry and Murphy survive the bomb on Murphy's car:I grinned at her and slumped down onto my back. "You okay?"
She dabbed at the blood on her lip with one hand. "Think so. You?"
"Clipped my shoulder on a mailbox," I said. "It hurts a little. Not a lot. Maybe I could take an aspirin. Just one. Not a whole dose or anything."
She sighed. "My God, you're such a whiner, Dresden."- Even the car bomb itself is pretty hilarious, in that before it's clarified that there was a bomb at all, it briefly looks like Harry's Stuff Blowing Up reputation has become so absurd that even In-Universe, just grounding out a lot of anxiety-induced magical energy made Murphy's car explode.
- While he's investigating the disappearances among the Ordo Lebes, Harry has to look around Thomas's apartment. Security comes to have a little talk with him. Which is when he realizes the backup plan.I was going to kill Thomas.
- "An NBA-sized gay burglar who works with a dog?"
- The ending line from Harry:I breezed out of the elevators, stopping at the security guy's desk. He nodded at me and waved me out, and Mouse and I departed the building, secure in our heterosexuality.
- Harry's snark is out in full force for this book. "Right. Okay, here's the plan. We follow all the other flammable people out of the building before we burn to death."
- Bob's joke when Harry wakes him up.Bob: What's up, boss?
Harry: Evil's afoot.
Bob: Well, sure, because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it'd be up to a meter by now. - Harry and Murphy briefly discuss Kincaid when talking about Cowl:"Right, forgot. When I met Cowl, you were in Hawaii with your boy toy."
Murph gave me a slow, smug smile. "Kincaid isn't a boy toy. He's a man toy. Definitely a man toy."
Molly, lying on the floor with her feet up on the wall while she read, dropped her book onto her face. She fumbled it back into her hands and then tried to appear uninterested in the conversation. It would have been more convincing if she weren't holding the book upside down. - Harry and Elaine (naturally) arguing Like an Old Married Couple is just a delight to read:
- When they're both heading towards the docks where Thomas seems to be hiding, and Elaine takes out the long chain she uses as a magic focus instead of Harry's staff:Harry: Careful. If you tell me you've got bracelets and a magical lariat in there, I may lose control of my sexual impulses.
Elaine: (snorts) You can't lose what you've never had. - And as they head aboard the Water Beetle:Harry: (to Elaine) Cover me.
Elaine: "Cover you." (shakes her head) I thought I was here on a job. Now it turns out I'm half of a buddy-cop movie.
Harry: Uh-huh. I'm the zany yet lovable one. You're the brainy conservative.
Elaine: What if I want to be the zany one?
Harry: Then you can hop out there on the boat.
Elaine: (in the tone of reciting a hastily memorized grocery list) Stop throwing the regulations out the window. We're supposed to catch the maniacs not become them. Don't do anything crazy, because I've only got two and a half seconds to go until I retire.
Harry: That's the spirit.
- When they're both heading towards the docks where Thomas seems to be hiding, and Elaine takes out the long chain she uses as a magic focus instead of Harry's staff:
- The first meeting Harry has with Thomas on the Water Beetle.Thomas: (after attacking Harry from behind) Give it up. It's a good act, but I know you aren't Harry Dresden. There's no way the real Dresden would have come here with a woman like that instead of his dog.
Harry: (blinks and turns to glare at him) Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? - "Fucking boats."
- Harry's incredibly petty revenge on Thomas for leaving him out of the loop for so long. He deliberately fails to stop Thomas from setting off a ward set up by Elaine that knocks him ass-over-end into a pile of trash cans. Made even funnier by how Harry describes his sarcastic apology to Thomas as being as genuine as "a five-year-old insisting that they didn't eat that chocolate chip cookie smeared all over their face."Harry: Oh, sorry about that. Maybe I should have told you about a potentially dangerous situation, huh? I mean, that would have been polite of me to warn you, right? And sensible. And intelligent. And respectful. And—
Thomas: I get it, I get it. [he then smears garbage all over his hands as Harry helps lift him up, with Harry rolling his eyes as Thomas glares at him] - Upon finding out that Madrigal Raith is one of the main villains of this book, Dresden remembers how he tried to sell him on eBay last time they met, much to Elaine's confusion.
- Mouse watches the tiny dog Toto hop into a pet-carrier on top of Abby's rolling suitcase, and then looks plaintively at Harry, as if hoping he can get a ride in one too. As a friendly reminder, there are horses smaller than Mouse.Harry: You've got to be kidding. I'd have to clip a railroad car to the suitcase and hire the Hulk to move it around. You're young and healthy. You walk.
- It's made even funnier by the fact that, when Mouse was first introduced in the series in Blood Rites, he was a puppy who could and did ride around in the pocket of Harry's duster.
- Evidently, Murphy and the rest of SI are determined to make sure Harry never lives it down having to pose as Thomas' lover.Murph: You're going syrupy on me, Dresden.
Harry: If it rains, I'll melt.
Murphy: It's to be expected. What with how you're gay and all now.
Harry: I'm wh... Oh. Thomas's apartment. Hell's bells, you cops have a fast grapevine.
Murphy: Yeah. Rawlins heard it at the coffee machine and he just had to call me up and tell me all about you and your boyfriend getting into a fight. He asked me if I should get you the sound track to Les Misérables or Phantom of the Opera for Christmas this year. Varetti and Farrel got a deal on track lighting from Malone's brother-in-law.
Harry: (exasperated) Don't you people have lives? (notices Murphy is still smiling at him, and warily eyes her) ...What are you getting me?
Murphy: Stallings and I found an autographed picture of Julie Newmar on eBay.
Harry: (sighs) You guys are never going to let go of this one, are you?
Murphy: (cheerily) We're cops. Of course not.- The real payoff from that incident comes a little later, when Harry and Murph are trying to get into see the proprietress of a high-class brothel, only to discover that Harry unknowingly possesses a lifetime membership:Murphy: What's that all about?
Harry: Don't ask me. I'm gay now. - The previous quote, a hilarious moment for Harry, was a result of showing up at one of "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone's businesses, essentially a brothel posing as a health club. Harry was greeted at the door with a Platinum membership package. When pressed for a reason why, Marcone delivers his own CMoF:Marcone: I am under no illusions about your fondness for myself and my business. I regard it as a preventative measure. In my judgment, my buildings are considerably less likely to burn to the ground during one of your visits if you are disoriented from being treated like a sultan.
Murphy: (snorts) He's got a point, Dresden.
Harry: (childishly) That was one time.
- The real payoff from that incident comes a little later, when Harry and Murph are trying to get into see the proprietress of a high-class brothel, only to discover that Harry unknowingly possesses a lifetime membership:
- When Ms. Demeter walks in and reveals her identity as Helen Beckitt, Harry is shocked speechless. Marcone... simply smiles.Demeter: It isn't polite to gloat.
Marcone: I'm simply savoring the moment. If you really knew the man, you'd appreciate how rare this is. - While the following scene is legitimately terrifying, Harry angrily growling "I. Am not. Yoda." to Molly is pretty darkly hilarious in the moment.
- The following conversation between Harry and Marcone in its entirety, all of which happens after Harry just faxed him a copy of the Unseelie Accords as part of his attempt at getting Marcone on his side as a contingency for the following duel with the White Court.The pay phone rang.
I hopped up, as much as I was able of hopping, and answered it. "Dresden."
John Marcone's voice was as cool and eloquent as ever. "You must think me insane."
"You read the papers I had faxed to you?"
"As had my counsel at Monoc," Marcone replied. "That doesn't mean-"
I interrupted him purely because I knew how much it would annoy him. "Look, we both know you're going to do it, and I'm too tired to dance," I told him. "What do you want?"
There was a moment of silence that might have been vaguely irritated. Being adolescent at someone like Marcone is good for my morale.
"Say please," Marcone said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Say please, Dresden," he replied, his tone smooth. "Ask me."
I rolled my eyes. "Give me a break."
"We both know you need me, Dresden, and I'm too tired to dance." I could practically see the shark smile on his face. "Say please."
I stewed for a sullen minute before I realized that doing so was probably building Marcone's morale, and I couldn't have that. "Fine," I said. "Please."
"Pretty please," Marcone prompted me.
Some pyromancial madman's thoughts flooded my forebrain, but I took a deep breath, tasered my pride, and said, "Pretty please."
"With a cherry on top."
"Fuck you," I said, and hung up on him. - Carlos Ramirez, who has for the last several books been bragging about his popularity with the ladies, meets Affably Evil sex vampiress Lara Raith, who immediately turns to Dresden and exclaims: "A virgin! Is he a present?" And of course, Harry being Harry, he makes increasingly hilarious comments about it through the rest of the scene.
- "Ramirez loved women. Ramirez never shut up about women. Well, he never shut up about anything in general."
- "They're going to try to flank us." "I know I never went to Warden combat school. But I feel I should remind you that this is not MY first time."
- Similarly, basically everything Ramirez says, ever. Especially his reaction to his wound.Ramirez: Bloody hell. Harry. There's a knife in my leg. When did that happen?
Harry: In the duel. Don't you remember?
Ramirez: I thought you'd stepped on me and sprained my ankle. (peers downward) Bloody hell. There's a knife in my guts. And they match. - Harry also manages to give Ramirez a bit of a boost when he starts flagging—by telling him his awesome prehistoric-ghoul-fighting isn't bad, for a virgin.
- Harry meets with Lara Raith and briefly contemplates nibbling at her offered hand, but scolds himself and basically sums up at least half of the series in a nutshell:
- Lord Raith giving an absolutely hilarious verbal smackdown to the Malvora contingent after Lady Cesarina objects to the challenge of Harry and Carlos.Lord Raith: (while giving a droll hand to Madrigal Raith and Vittorio Malvora) Unless, of course, our war heroes here lack the courage to withstand this utterly predictable response to their course of action. They are, of course, free to decline the challenge, should they feel themselves unable to face the consequences of their deeds.
- "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Bowling for Vampires!"
- The best part? The Raiths laugh and applaud. Harry is disturbed.
- Harry telling Murphy to pick on someone her own size when she has Hendricks in an arm lock.
- Lara after Harry wards her off with his four years of... fidelity."Still... A man like you and it's been four years..." She shook her head. "I have enormous personal respect for you, wizard. But that's just... sad."
- After Harry and Lara, against all odds, survive some unexpected developments in The Deeps, they make a few thinly veiled threats to each other, and when she asks him directly if he's threatening her, he slowly looks around at the destroyed room they're standing in, the hole in the ceiling, and the four floors and the roof above it that the two of them came smashing down through, and drily asks "What threat could I possibly be to you, Lara?"
- Following the abover scene, Harry makes a few fairly reasonable requests of Lara before he leaves. The last one, though, is what finally makes her lose her cool and tell him to Get Out!.
- Harry describes the Deeps as "the place where my brother nearly got sacrificed by a cult of porn-star sorceresses".
- And Molly has to stop him for a second, just to make sure that he really just said that.
- Harry and Ramirez trading info about the most dangerous foe they've ever faced.Harry: What do you call them?
Ramirez: The Black Hats, after our Ringwraith-wannabe, Cowl. You?
Harry: The Black Council.
Ramirez: Oooh. Yours is better. - Upon finding Marcone and Ms. Demeter in a compromising position — with her seated in his lap and a few buttons undone on his shirt — Harry comments that it's a pity he came in when he did. If he'd come in five minutes later, it would've been much more embarrassing.
- There's also the following delightful exchange between Harry and Marcone:"Tonight you will be visited by three spirits," I announced. "The ghosts of indictment past, present, and future. They will teach you the true meaning of 'you are still a scumbag criminal.'"
"Dresden," Marcone said, his tone pleasant. Helen made no move to stir from where she was. "It's nice to see you alive. Your sense of humor, of course, remains unchanged, which is unsurprising, as it seems to have died in your adolescence. Presumably, it entered into a suicide pact with your manners."
- There's also the following delightful exchange between Harry and Marcone:
- After Lash's Heroic Sacrifice, Bob says that Harry's been brain-damaged and uses this as an opportunity to mock him. Harry's response?
- Later in the same conversation, Bob asks why Harry hasn't slept with Murphy yet. Harry reaches under the workbench, pulls out a claw hammer, and gives Bob a pointed look. Bob promptly pulls a Verbal Backspace.
- The Reveal of Thomas's solution to the problem of his vampire hunger. Harry has spent two books worrying that he's gone back to hunting and victimizing women... instead, he's started a high-end beauty salon and has been posing as a gay French hairdresser. Brilliant and comedy gold.
