Mieville's The City and The City

China Mieville is brilliant. Britons might throw that word around lightly, but Americans don't and I'm declaring him a brilliant writer.

His newest book, The City and The City, is a detective novel, but it is also a political murder mystery, complete with a Christie-style summary at the end.

The political intrigue is where the book really shines, and is reason I love this novel. I'm not a huge Chandler or Christie fan, so the intricate political landscape is what kept my attention through the difficult beginning and early by-the-book sleuthing.

The book is set in two cities, in one location. For whatever ancient reasons, the two cities exist in the same physical location wrapped around and struck-through each other. Each has its own government, laws, and bureaucracy. The supreme law of the land, though, and the conceit that allows this situation to work, is that citizens of city are not allowed to enter, see, smell, or otherwise experience a section designated as being in the other city.

Confused? You should be.

A lesser writer would have made a mess of this set-up, but Mieville somehow pulls it off. It is hard work for the reader though, and you will spend a good 50 pages confused, trying to make sense of an aside like "...(and who did not do that? who failed to fail to see, sometimes?)."

Eventually you will realize just how plausible these cities are. I can't imagine this book being portrayed on the screen or even in a graphic novel. But I can imagine them being a reality. Who of us has not pretended to not notice, has not "unseen," as Mieville puts it, unpleasant things?

Not that these cities are unpleasant. The citizens of both are kept unseeing by fear instead. Forget to unsee a policzai car in a Beszel street in front of you, the same physical street shared or "cross-hatched" with your street in Ul Quoma, and you'll be disappeared by the shadowy organization known as Breach. In more fun terms: if you breach, you'll meet Breach.

The novel is propelled by a murder, committed in Ul Quoma, and a body, found in Beszel. Throughout his investigations, Inspector Tyador Borlu runs up against inter-city political committees, Ultra-nationalists, Unification supporters, and archaeologists. Some of these characters even think there may be a third city in the unclaimed spaces of the others...

I've spoiled nothing, though. At it's root this is a hard-boiled detective novel with plenty of action and break-neck pacing in the second and third sections. It's the best novel I've read so far this year and there's a reason it recently won an Aurthur C. Clarke award. It's out in paperback now, and Mieville's next book is due out soon.

I have a feeling I soon won't be able to read enough Mieville. I'm going to devour Perdido Street Station soon.