Jim Butcher continues moving his Dresden series forward while also bringing it back to its roots. At the same time that Harry Dresden is pulled into a bank-robbing caper with arch-villain Nicodemus Archleone and a gang of mostly-evil henchmen, he's also reconnecting with his own crew, or elements of it, as we get big doses of Murphy, Butters, and Michael Carpenter throughout the novel. 
 Butcher gives us the sort of neatly contained problem story we've come to expect--Harry has a job, he appears to be in over his head, and with great cleverness and suffering he wins through. This was the main focus of the novel, but at the same time we at least see hints of the larger plot advancing. 
 In the realm of character development, Butcher advances some of the areas of Harry's personality that have been, in some ways, long overdue.