The City & The City

Title: The City & The City
Author: China Mieville
Pub Date: 2009
Genre: Crime, Science Fiction
Nutshell: A murder occurs in a fractured town, resulting in more questions than answers.

This was a recommendation from someone I met at a Netrunner tournament, so definitely not the kind of book I probably would have found normally. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, of course.

This book is, at its heart, a pretty standard procedural. It's the story of a cop trying to solve a murder. The twist comes with the city where he lives. 
[Here be sort of spoilers, though nothing that will ruin the plot.]

See, Beszel and Ul Qoma, they're different, but they're the same. The city is shared and divided, and residents live in one place or the other, refusing to see the inhabitants of their sister place. It is definitely a novel concept, and while I sincerely doubt it would work in actual life, it might be a darn sight better than some of the ways divided areas operate now. 

So a young woman is murdered in Beszel, and Inspector Tyador Borlu is tasked with finding out what's happened to her, and whether or not Ul Qoma has anything to do with it. His investigation becomes weirder and more complex with each new lead, and the story's end reveals as much about the rest of the world as it does the dealings between the two main entities. 

This is a weird book, and it started off a bit slow, for all it began with a murder. You're probably going to need to like procedurals to really like this. The stuff about the cities is strange, but it's not that hard to get around if you just maintain a willing suspension of disbelief. But if you don't care about police stories, you're going to be struggling. Overall, this was definitely well-written, but a bit slow at times. Probably because police fiction isn't really my thing. But it held me to the end, and not every book can do that, so it's worth checking out if you think you're curious. I'm going to try some more of Mieville's work (Perdido Street Station was on my radar before) and see what else he does.