I have to say, pretty much all of the posts since I made my last post in this thread have been really smart. Probably the one that most captured what was in my mind was Mira's post about how in Storm Front, Harry was pressed for time, but he asked questions; I would add like a detective, which set things up for future development. I wasn't expecting Harry to ask questions in Peace Talks that would be developed in future Dresden Files novels, but I was hoping he would ask questions that would lead to future answers in Battle Ground. I think, "Why did Thomas do it? He wouldn't have, so he must have been pressured by someone else," isn't much of a question or answer.
At the risk of aggravating my fellow forum contributors, I'm going to mention something Jim said in the Facebook interview that I failed to put into my earlier post. One of the publisher's reasons that won Jim over to the idea of turning Peace Talks into two books was, if the novel had come out as a single book it's size would have necessitated a retail price of $50 or perhaps a little more than that, which would have been a first in the industry for a popular novelist. Jim didn't want to be the guy who pushed that price point.
I don't think I'm going to comment on that.