The city & the city

With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, the multi-award winning The City & The City by China Mieville is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights. 'You can't talk about Mieville without using the word "brilliant".' - Ursula Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series. When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad.

But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined.

Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger.

Borlu must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other. Adapted into the BBC Two series The City And The City starring David Morrissey.