However, personally I could have done without the constant swearing. Yes, some of the women are victims but Corwi is a fellow police officer and Borlú clearly needs and depends on her.
While Miéville follows many of the definitions for a hard-boiled detective story, one refreshing element for me was the lack of misogyny. There’s very little character development and the vast majority of the story is Borlú and his companion interviewing people and making deductions.
Corwi trusts him and backs him up all the way, even though they don’t seem to have any special relationship before the story. He’s a good cop and very soon he starts to care about the dead woman and her life, putting even his own career in jeopardy in order to find out what happened to her. In this story, if the house next door to you belongs to the other city, you aren’t allowed to see it, or the people walking beside you if you think that they belong to the other city.īorlú is a pretty typical detective. How what we’ve been taught (from birth) shapes the way we see other people and buildings around us. In the end, the book is about how people’s perceptions and thoughts shape our reality. The two cities’ relationship is fascinating and Miéville spends a lot of time clarifying it to us. But their investigation leads inexorably towards the other city Ul Qoma. Together they suspect the unificationists, who want to unite the two cities, and nationalists who want to keep the cities apart. Lizbyet Corwi knows the streets better than the inspector and acts as a back-up and a sounding boards too. The call comes from Ul Qoma which is, of course, almost a breach.īorlú recruits a young constable to help him. But soon Borlú gets a mysterious phone call which tells him otherwise. At first, the police suspect that she’s a prostitute. This book is really a hard-broiled detective story but in fantastical cities.ĭetective Inspector Tyador Borlú works for the Beszel Extreme Crime Squad and the story begins when he’s called to a murder scene. They are the bogie men making sure that the citizens of two cities keep apart from each other. Breaches are governed by the mysterious organization called the Breach. If they don’t, they are guilty of a breach which the most heinous crime either city has. Daily, they see the buildings and people of the other city but must ignore and unsee them. Inside and beside it is another city, Ul Qoma, which is different legally, culturally, and especially in the minds of the citizens of both city states.
Publisher of the Finnish translation: Karistoīeszel is a divided city but not in a physical way. Publication year of the Finnish translation: 2011 A stand-alone speculative fiction detective story.
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