Hendricks

Spoiler-light. Hendricks's role is contained to chapter seven and there is no full-spoiler section.

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In a sentence

Gentleman Johnny Marcone's silent, mountain-sized bodyguard and driver — a one-scene presence in Storm Front who fills the doorway of the limo where Marcone offers Harry money to drop the case, and whose entire job in the scene is to be the unspoken second sentence in every sentence Marcone speaks.

Who he is in the story

Hendricks works for Marcone. He drives, he opens doors, he carries a concealed pistol at his hip, and he stands where standing is what the moment requires. When Marcone speaks softly and politely about a problem he would like Harry to consider, Hendricks is the visible reminder that Marcone's polite request has a second draft. In the limo scene in chapter seven he does not speak. He does not need to. The book introduces him as an environmental factor — a brick wall in a suit — and lets the scene carry the message.

The character recurs throughout the series and gets meaningfully more interesting in later books. In Storm Front he is, on purpose, exactly one thing: the threat that lets Marcone keep his manners.

What he's like

Taciturn, disciplined, professionally menacing. He projects pressure by proximity. Loyal and controlled, he moves and positions himself to dominate space without wasted motion. When he does act, it is efficient and decisive. He does not posture and does not threaten verbally; that is Marcone's job, and Marcone does not actually threaten either — that is the joke. The threat is structural.

What he wants

To do the job. To protect Marcone. To be where he needs to be when he needs to be there. The book gives him no interior beyond that and the absence is intentional — Storm Front is not about him.

What he fears / hides

Off-page in this book. The series will get to it. Here, he is a wall.

Key relationships

• Gentleman Johnny Marcone — employer, principal, and the man whose words his presence underlines. The relationship is professional and the book lets you sense that it is also long-running.
• Harry Dresden — immediate physical counterweight and intimidation presence during the chapter-seven negotiation. Adversarial without direct dialogue.

What he looks like

Very large and thick-shouldered, well over six feet, brick-wall build — the kind of bulk that fills a car door and a hotel doorway. Buzz-cut red-brown hair. Heavy, blunt features. A cold, blank, professionally menacing expression. Light-skinned, faintly freckled. Visible mass through the suit — the kind of muscle that drapes rather than strains.

The wardrobe is the bodyguard standard: a black single-breasted suit conservatively cut, expensive enough to lay smoothly over the bulk; a crisp white shirt; a plain black tie; black leather gloves; polished black shoes. The suit jacket is slightly tented at the hip where the concealed holster sits. A small earpiece coiled at his ear. Rain-beaded shoulders when he comes in from the storm.

For your book club

• Marcone's polite offer in chapter seven only works because Hendricks is standing there. How much of the scene's meaning is in Marcone's words and how much is in Hendricks's silence?
• The book uses physical presence as power for multiple characters (Hendricks, Morgan, Kalshazzak the demon). Compare. What does each one do with mass that the others don't?
• Hendricks is one of the most-employed minor characters in the early Dresden Files. Storm Front gives him a doorway and a holster. Is that enough?

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Hendricks (canonical — the most common form)
• Mr. Hendricks