Death Masks

Death Masks is the fifth of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, published in 2003, and it puts Harry Dresden in front of two deadlines at once. The first arrives with a priest who wants the Shroud of Turin found. The second comes from the vampire courts, which have decided that a formal duel is a tidier way to end their war with the White Council than a battlefield.

Butcher had the rules of his Chicago in place by this point in the series, so the book spends its energy on what those rules cost. Harry's allies include the Knights of the Cross, three men who carry blessed swords and take a very different view of the fight he is in, and Susan Rodriguez, the reporter he has not seen since an earlier catastrophe left her part vampire.

The story moves from charity auctions to boats on the lake and finally toward an airport, with a fallen angel's coin offered to Harry more than once and refused each time. The Shroud is never simply a relic: it is a bargaining counter in a war that began long before Harry was born, which is what makes the private sale of it so much worse than theft. It is a middle book in a long series and behaves like one, widening the war the earlier novels began and leaving Harry holding responsibilities he never asked for.