The City and The City by China Mieville

Wow, I am still struggling to figure out what is going on.

There has been a murder.  It has occurred in the City of Beszel.  Or has it?  A woman has been killed and as a result of the investigation it has come to light that the woman may have gone to U1 Qoma illegally or possibly a third city, thought by some to be the result of someone's imagination.

There is another city in the same place but citizens of Beszel have been trained to not notice the city, it's people and it's landmarks.  Can you really do that?  To make matters worse if you don't ignore those things and places you have trained to ignore, you may be causing a breach, an offense that could lead to life altering changes or even death.

The Beszel investigator in charge of the murder case has been given permission to investigate in U1 Qoma but it is very strange for him to notice things now that he has been taught to ignore.  He is partnered with a detective "Dhatt" in U1 Qoma and still confers with his partner in Beszel
"Corwi".  Separately and together the three of them investigate the murder.  In addition to the one student being killed, there is another student missing.  They discover that it has something to do with "Orciny" , possibly a third City within in the City.

There are two huge problems with this book that the author never deals with, firstly, the fact that it would be impossible for a city of human beings to memorize and remember with such detail the elaborate border system that the author has described in order not to be in "breach".  The second issue is the author never explains why a person would want to live in such a city, where they could be causing a "breach" incident at any time when they clearly and easily live anywhere in the world they want to.  There doesn't seem to be anything redeeming in either city, Beszel or U1 Qoma to keep all these people there that are in constant stress of seeing and unseeing and possibly being killed or disappearing from breach.

If you can get past the fact that the book doesn't really make sense but is a work of total fantasy then the book is quite amusing about half way through when you can get a handle of what the "hell" is going on.
In some ways the book is a crime novel in that there is a mystery and it gets solved but really in the best novels the discoveries made along the way are part of the fun.  In this book, the discoveries come to our detective by pure imagination on the part of the author.  He never makes a leap or discovery by way of investigation but by the fact that the author said he did.  Things just sort of come to him without a lot of rhyme or reason.  It's still a fun ride though because the book isn't really about solving the crime, it's about wondering what would it be like to live in a city where you had to unsee things that exist in order to exist without causing "breach".

It was very confusing to read but it was never boring and it flowed pretty well.  I enjoyed considering some of the issues and predicaments the characters got themselves into and out of.