Leslie Mayflower is known as The Huntsman. While he has no magical abilities of his own, he has a long and renowned career of tracking down and bringing people with magical abilities to justice. Mayflower retired some time ago, but when his old partner, Samantha Mansgraf, is found brutally murdered, he is compelled to take up the job once again. Mansgraf was known as one of the most powerful witches in the world, so the idea that she has been killed, by anyone, Unorthodox or otherwise, is surprising to everyone. Even more surprising is the cryptic message she wrote in her own blood in a long dead language. Mayflower is able to decipher the message quickly, and he knows The Department of Unorthodox Affairs won't be far behind him. If he has any hope of acting on Mansgraf's last message, he needs to work quickly.
Mansgraf's message, "Kill Grimsby," seems to point Mayflower to the witch's killer, but when The Huntsman finds and confronts a former student of hers, Griswald Grimsby, what Mayflower finds is a half-trained witch who was booted out of the Department's program before becoming a full Auditor.
Grimsby hasn't had a great life. When he was young, his apartment building burned down and he survived, but heavily scarred. Those scars limit his magical abilities in many ways. While there are a couple of tried and true spells he can pull off better than others, many spells most Unorthodox can perform with ease are a trial for Grimsby. This lack of control is apparently one of the reasons Mansgraf denied what he had hoped would be a long career as an Auditor. Now, he finds there are only a few jobs he can get where he can use his talents. One such is the resident witch at Mighty Magic Donald's Food Kingdom. On a daily basis, he performs magic shows for unruly birthday kids in a tutu and styrofoam wings in the shape of tacos. Needless to say, Grimsby isn't really happy about his life over the past year.
It also isn't hard to understand why, when Mansgraf's body is discovered, Grimsby is one of the first people questioned (even without deciphering the victim's last message). Grimsby learns of Mansgraf's death when his former classmates, Auditors Rayne Bathory and Wilson Hives, appear in their full authority. While they really don't believe this half-trained witch could have actually defeated such a powerful person, there are other creatures that a witch can make deals with in order to get things done.
While Rayne and Hives leave mostly satisfied that Grimsby couldn't really be involved, Mayflower approaches Grimsby in a much more determined manner, but Mayflower is also quick to dismiss the idea that Grimsby could actually have harmed his former partner. Before Mayflower can leave, Grimsby forces The Huntsman to let the younger man tag along. While Mayflower doesn't see how much help Grimsby could really be, Grimsby sees this as an opportunity to hopefully get in the good graces with the Department and hopefully get back on track for being an Auditor. Besides, Mansgraf wrote Grimsby's name for some reason.
What follows is a cat and mouse game as Mayflower and Grimsby dig into Mansgraf's last actions. The duo explore her secret lair and travel from one end of Boston to the other, investigating everything from hellish night clubs to the site of an old apartment fire, all in the hopes of getting their hands on some relic that Mansgraf was apparently in possession of, which could very well be the reason she was killed.
Dead Man's Hand does a lot of interesting world building. In this novel, we get introduced to how the normal people feel about the Unorthodox, how people with magic deal with the various non-human creatures of the world, and how humans interact with a strange parallel world known as Elsewhere in order to use their magic. All of these interactions feel natural in Butcher's story, and it is clear that this book only scratches the surface of what is happening in The Unorthodox Chronicles. As the start of a new series, I'm hooked and can't wait to see where things go from here.
I'll end this review with one final note that I wanted to address. James J. Butcher is the son of Jim Butcher, author of The Dresden Files, and while the son has also set his first series in an urban fantasy world, I wanted to make it clear that Dead Man's Hand doesn't feel like a Dresden clone. The noir vibes that Dresden puts off aren't present in The Unorthodox Chronicles, and that tone shift alone goes a long way towards separating the two authors. For a debut novel, Dead Man's Hand has a lot of polish to it and it has also captured my interest. I can't say for certain that my love of Dresden isn't influencing my feelings towards Dead Man's Hand. I would be interested to see how I would have felt about this book if I had not known of the familial connection (similar to Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, initially publishing without exposing his own connections), but I don't begrudge the Butchers from doing this. I do like this book and I do believe it is good on its own merits, and I think anyone who likes the urban fantasy genre will want to check out Dead Man's Hand: The Unorthodox Chronicles - Book 1.
