The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.

This line is the famous opening sentence of Jim Butcher’s urban-fantasy novel *Blood Rites*, the sixth installment in *The Dresden Files*. Narrated in first person by wizard-private-investigator Harry Dresden, it drops the reader into immediate chaos and establishes the series’ signature blend of noir voice, gallows humor, and supernatural mayhem. The deadpan insistence that the fire “wasn’t my fault” reflects Dresden’s recurring predicament: his work routinely ends in spectacular collateral damage, and he is often blamed by authorities and bystanders alike, even when events are triggered by darker forces he is trying to stop.

The sentence works as both hook and character sketch. The stark image of a burning building signals danger and action, while the defensive qualifier—“and it wasn’t my fault”—immediately frames the narrator as beleaguered, ironic, and accustomed to being misunderstood. It also gestures toward a central theme of the series: Dresden’s struggle to do the right thing in a world where outcomes are messy and reputations are easily tarnished. The humor comes from the contrast between the gravity of a fire and the almost bureaucratic insistence on personal exoneration, inviting readers to expect a story where catastrophe and wit coexist.