YMMV / Dead Beat

• Complete Monster: Capiocorpus, aka the Corpsetaker, is a former student and Bastard Understudy of the evil necromancer Heinrich Kemmler. Prolonging her own life by stealing the bodies of others before torturing her victims to death, the Corpsetaker also delights in causing mental anguish, bringing devastation and destruction to the minds of the people she tortures. Along with the other heirs of Kemmler, the Corpsetaker plans to consume the souls of thousands in a ritual as a bid to become a god. Killed by Harry, the Corpsetaker returns as the malevolent "Grey Ghost" and enslaves other spirits to help her return to life. Torturing the ectomancer Mortimer Linderquist, the Corpsetaker has his mind fed to the evil Wraiths—a painful process that destroys the sanity of the victim and something she relishes in doing—hoping to break him and use him to control the spirit population of the city she is in. Allying with the Fomor, the Corpsetaker plans to crush the resistance to them in Chicago and allow them to run amok and cause mass death and destruction while she tries to return to life. Devouring the souls of dozens of spirits, the Corpsetaker attempts to regain corporeal form and tries to steal the body of one of Harry's friends to continue her immortal life of cruelty. Defined by a lifelong path of sadism, the Corpsetaker showed time and again why she was one of Harry's most vicious enemies.
• Growing the Beard: The first book in the series is reviled by some, considered average by most, and loved by a few, but all agree that this book was a huge improvement on the series as a whole and the beginning of a significant upward trend in the writing and storytelling quality. The plot begins to become more focused with various plot points coming together, things are happening on a larger scale and with a faster pace, the humor is more tolerable, and it is simply far better written overall. Even Jim Butcher himself feels this way, going as far as to advise new readers of the series to start with this one.
• Inferred Holocaust: Harry accidentally releases the Wild Hunt in downtown Chicago thanks to Cowl. The countless deaths and/or missing people that would inevitably result from this are only vaguely alluded to in the end and somehow conflated ordinary murders that occurred at the same time. To be fair, it was stated that even the Erlking wasn't strong enough to break a solid threshold, and that most of the citizens of Chicago mostly stayed at home, but there still are all the homeless, the pubs and suchlike, and the fact that not any house is enough to be considered a home...
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • After Ortega mentions he would feed on children and some of the actions Bianca took, it seems like the Red Court couldn't sink much lower. Unfortunately, this was most certainly the wrong assumption to make. To kill a small number of White Council wizards recovering in a muggle hospital, they had human mercenaries release a nerve gas in the city block including the hospital killing several thousand innocent people.
  • As noted above under Inferred Holocaust, Cowl arguably crosses it when he clocks Harry upside the head and arranges for the Erlking & Wild Hunt to rampage through Chicago, as this puts all of the countless deaths performed by the Wild Hunt on his head.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • A good reason to re-read this book is that it becomes clear how sneaky Lasciel's shadow was being, all the time she posed as "Sheila".
  • A certain event from Skin Game makes Butter's Big Damn Heroes moment even more awesome. He was sent by Uriel, who used an incipient Knight of the Cross as a counter to a former Denarian.
• Signature Scene: Harry and Butters riding into battle on the back of Sue the zombie T-rex. Suffice to say, it’s often argued to be the defining moment of the entire series.