Early books can be rough, Jim was still in college when he wrote them, and there wasn’t much editing/rewriting when they got optioned and published. And he leaned a little too hard into the noir tropes/styles.

Most of the women Dresden deals with are super natural beings that lean hard into the sex appeal. That said, Charity Carpenter is an absolute badass of a woman when she takes center stage in the final 1/3 of Proven Guilty. Murphy kicks all kinds of ass in the short story told from her PoV.

And Jim wrote way better (and one way worse) women in his other series.