The City & The City

The City and the City is the best kind of imaginative fiction. It has one central idea and it gives it enough room to properly explore.

The book follows Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel extreme crime squad as he investigates a body that was dumped in the streets of his City. At its core this is a police procedural following Borlu as he goes about the investigation. But that is not why you want to read this book. This book is really about the setting, the city of Besźel and the city of Ul Qoma...

This is not to say the novel is not enjoyable at the level of a police procedural, it is, watching Borlú put together the case is a satisfying experience. It is just that the investigation of the setting is much more interesting territory than a murder investigation.